


Naverea

by F-117 Nighthawk (F117_Nighthawk)



Series: Dark Matter [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A lot of this ended up from the Lions' POV oops?, Broganes and their Lions, Dont Mess With The Broganes, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hypothermia, I make up even more aliens, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Adoptive Siblings, Mental Link, Mind Meld, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Scarlet does tho, Stubborn Keith (Voltron), aka "superpowers", but he doesn't know it rn, but other than that it's the Broganes show again, discussions of the weird aspects of the Paladin-Lion link, hidden bases, protective red lion, the galra are really bad at traps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-05-26 04:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14992769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F117_Nighthawk/pseuds/F-117%20Nighthawk
Summary: Shortly after the wormhole, Team Voltron is picking up supplies from a rather cold planet. They're shortly informed of possible Imperial presence in the system, and Keith volunteers to check it out.It goes a tad downhill from there.





	1. Looking For: Mama Lion Willing to Fight Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually not one of the things I'm finishing and posting, surprisingly, but I realized that the other two things I have will make a lot more sense if I actually, you know, _explain the headcanon they majorly rely on in-universe_  
>  and I ended up focusing a lot of energy on this instead of finishing those so. We'll see when I get to those I'm taking a small break to try and draw a thing (for my new computer :D)  
> I also combined this with an idea I had a while ago about Keith being more susceptible to the cold/various illnesses due to his Galran genes. It's....changed a lot since I first got that idea though.
> 
> Gonna try and post a chapter every other day or so? I'm still not done the second half-ish

Keith wasn’t particularly happy with Allura’s choice of restock planet this time. Dawhara consistently had temperatures below freezing, and _stayed_ there. He really, _really,_ hated the cold. So go figure that they’d end up on a planet that looked a little too much like Hoth for his tastes.

Lucky for him, Shiro knew this and had assigned him to come with him to pick up supplies, while Pidge and Hunk were stuck scouring for medicinal herbs and Lance and Allura were negotiating. Things were always better with Shiro around.

Didn’t mean he wasn’t cold, though. He was standing next to Scarlet, helmet closed to conserve as much heat as possible, watching some of the Dawhari load what he was pretty sure was food onto her when he felt a hand land on his shoulder. “Doing okay?”

Keith turned slightly to look at Shiro grumpily. “Okay as it’s possible in this temperature.”  
Shiro snorted. “Just hang on, alright? This shouldn’t take too long, and then I’ll see if I can get the castle dispensers to make hot chocolate.”

Keith’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

“Well, we might need to wait for Hunk to get back but absolutely.”

He smiled, and then frowned as the comm started beeping in his ear. Blinking at it on his HUD, he opened the chanel. “Team Broganes here.”

Lance’s muffled laughter came over the chanel. “Really?”

“Blame the Holts,” Shiro told him, “it stuck.”

“What’re you calling for, Lance?”

“Okay, so, you know how Allura and I are standing around negotiating? Well apparently there’s been Galra activity in this sector for a while now, which is why they called us in the first place. They can’t figure out specifics, but they’re pretty sure there’s at least a base on their moon, Kuot.”

“I’ll do it.”

Shiro made a face behind him. “What?”

“Shiro, why else would Lance be calling the team if not because the Dawhari wanted someone to deal with the base.”

“Uh, Keith, wait a sec,” Lance sounded like he wasn’t sure that Keith had actually understood what he said. “The Dawhari don’t actually _know_ where the base _is._ They’re not even sure if it’s there, just that there’s _something_ in the system.”

“Well then _why did you call?”_

Lance was silent for a moment. “...because Allura said to tell one of you to check it out.”

Keith turned and walked up Scarlet’s ramp. “Better than standing around in the cold or lugging boxes.”

“Ah, yeah, see, Kuot is even colder than here. Like, fifty degrees less on a _good_ day, and Azul tells me it’s not a good day.”

Keith groaned and leaned his head against Scarlet’s muzzle. “Am I just cursed?”

“Probably. See ya later, then, Mullet!” Lance clicked off the comm and Keith let out a long sigh.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to do it?” Shiro sounded concerned.

“No, Kuro’s got a bigger hold than Scarlet and we need these supplies. Plus, I’m probably not actually going to have to leave her cockpit, right?”

“Alright, well, call if you find anything. No charging in by yourself this time, okay?”

“Hey!” Keith poked his head out of the Lion’s mouth and glared at Shiro, who grinned at him and then pointed the Dawhari that were heading towards Scarlet towards Kuro. 

* * *

 

Kuot was snowy. Scarlet wouldn’t be surprised if it was nothing _but_ snow at this rate. According to the map Pidge had provided they were supposed to be a few klicks in front of a mountain range, but she was fairly certain the Keith couldn’t see more than half a klick in front of her head, and she certainly couldn’t see further. He felt frustrated, and _very_ grumpy, his quintessence a moody swirl. She tried to calm him down, but he didn’t seem to be listening to her emotions and started poking at her scanning array.

 **Don’t even bother,** she told him, **radar and IR are useless here, even my quintessence sensing is fuzzy.**

Keith leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms with a huff. “Then what _is_ working?”

**....good old-fashioned visual?**

He didn’t seem happy with that. He sighed and grabbed the controls again. “If you call this _working_ I’d like to see what you call _not_ working. Can you at least overlay the topographic map so we don’t run into anything?” She obliged, the viewport HUD shimmering and a wireframe of the topography popping up. Keith pushed the controls forward and Scarlet bounded towards the mountains.

They both stayed alert, looking for anything that looked like it could be hiding a base. It was hard at many points, as much of the moon was rocky mountains, with alcoves and canyons too small for even Scarlet to fit through. They tried to stay stealthy, this was just supposed to be a scouting mission right now, but they both knew that if they did indeed find the base they’d be close enough to be seen back. This was going to end in a fight, one way or another.

They were on the second mountain chain when she felt something catch Keith’s eye. He pulled the controls back and Scarlet stopped, looking around herself.

“That outcropping back there wasn’t on the map.”

**Could just be a rockslide.**

“Possibly, but I don’t think so. It looked too.....stacked. Like it was covering something.” He turned them around and flew back over the outcropping, slower.

**Hmm, it does look a little different from the rest of the surroundings. It’s just slightly...off. I’ll mark it on the map and—**

“No, there’s a place that I think we can set down just over this ridge. I want a closer look.”

What??? Why was he setting down??? **Wh-** **_Keith._ **

“What?”

**_No._ **

“Oh come on, Scarlet, I won’t be out there for very long.” He angled them down to the ground, landing in snow that came up to the top of her feet.

 **It is at** **_least_ ** **fifty degrees below freezing** **_in your Earth units_ ** **and setting down here is going to make your walk over there at least an hour long over hard terrain.**

“I’ll be _fine._ The armor life support should be enough to keep me at normal human temperature.”

She almost, _almost,_ told him that he wasn’t a normal human. That he was always colder than the others on the Castle because he was adapted for the _desert,_ that Imperial ships were warm for a _reason._

But he wasn’t ready to hear that yet.

(In truth, she thought, he was probably close to figuring it out himself. But right now was not the time to spring that on him, not in the middle of a mission, not when he was already frustrated and grumpy, not on a freezing cold planet, even if it was the only thing that was likely to stop him from walking out into the snow.)

He was standing in her mouth, waiting for her to lower the ramp. “Scarlet, open the door please?”

She growled in his head, **I do not think this is a wise idea.**

“Scarlet, _please,_ it’ll just be quick, in and out. I promise I won’t even stay if it is the base.”

She knew that was a lie. He was being _stubborn._ A _stubborn idiot who absolutely knew better_ and yet _here they were._ **Cub. Please.**

“Scarlet, seriously. I can _handle_ it.”

 _Stubborn. Idiot._ She wasn’t going to be able to convince him to not, she knew that much. They were too much alike sometimes. Reluctantly, she opened her mouth and extended the ramp into the snow, but not before she tapped into his armor and upped the temperature controls a notch. With any luck, it would be enough.

She watched Keith as he trudged through the snow, his footprints quickly covered over by the snow. She padded after him as best she could, but didn’t get more than a few meters before the narrow pathways on the mountains prevented her from moving. She hissed at the rock and was of half a mind to swat at the mountain itself. Stupid mountain, stupid wind, stupid _snow._ She was letting her cub go out there without full knowledge of how dangerous it was, without any backup, without any easy way to get to him.

 _Stupid. Snow._  

* * *

 

“Okay, how many more boxes do we have left?”

“We’re about a fourth of the way through, Sir.”

Shiro groaned. He had been lugging boxes for at _least_ two hours now, wasn’t this not supposed to take this long? At this rate Pidge and Hunk would be done before him. He shoved the box he was holding onto the stack and turned to head back out of Kuro.

He had been watching the Dawhari for most of those two hours. One of them seemed to never leave his side, and occasionally seemed like they wanted to say something to him, but were too timid, or anxious, to do so. It was a little weird, but he figured if it was important the Dawhari would tell him eventually.

He paused at the bottom of the ramp; Kuro’s mood had drastically shifted from content to...something else.

**Kuro?**

**Scarlet is....frustrated.**

Shiro waved the Dawhari that was half-attached to him on, stepping aside to talk to Kuro. Their antena twitched in what seemed like fear, but they continued on their way. **Something wrong?**

**They spotted something that could possibly be a base, however, it is high up in the mountains along a pass too narrow for Scarlet to access without blowing up the mountain.**

Ah. **And let me guess, Keith went off to investigate by himself.**

**Correct. He’s been gone for a little over an hour, and despite being able to feel him, Scarlet is worried.**

Shiro sighed. **Want me to try calling him?**

**I imagine she would feel better if you did, but I doubt it would change anything. In addition, communication is...finicky in the snow.**

“Can’t hurt,” he muttered, opening his comm. “Shiro to Keith, hey, can you hear me?”

There was a moment of static and then “Shiro? —read you, cutting—little though.”

“Did you go off in the snow by yourself?”

There was static for longer than there would have been for an interruption. “Yes.”

“Whyyyyy?”

“—outcropping—it out—”

He sighed. This was just like his little brother, rush into things without fully thinking the consequences to himself through because he thought it was the best thing to do. “I can’t convince you to go back to Scarlet, can I?”

“I’m—Shiro.”

He assumed the missing words included “almost.” “Fine. Check in once you get there, alright?”

“Already—” Oh, he was already there? “Can see—door in side of mountain—pass—hangar over—if it’s currently in use—”

Shiro could barely make out what Keith was trying to say over the static, but he had definitely found something worth checking out. Shiro didn’t want him doing it alone, however, wanted at least Scarlet with him. “Go back to Scarlet then, okay? I don’t want you raiding bases alone right now. How are you doing with the cold?”

“—stopped shivering—minutes ago—used to it.”

Shiro had a small moment of panic. “You _what?”_ Did Keith not know hypothermia symptoms??? Was the connection periodically cutting out covering Keith’s speech slurring?? Was it covering other symptoms??

“What? Why—Scar—” Keith cut himself off with a yelp as something that sounded like blasterfire made its way through the static.

“Keith! _Keith!”_

Keith cried out in pain and the comm went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man poor keef in this >:)


	2. Between a Rock and a Snowy Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith goes off by himself and everything goes downhill.  
> Literally.

Keith _hated_ the cold. He could feel it even through his armor, past the insulated undersuit, past the environmental controls he _knew_ Scarlet had turned up a notch. This was designed to be a _space-suit,_ why was it so _cold._

He shivered his way up the mountain, folding his arms in some attempt to keep a little more heat. Scarlet was a warm presence in the back of his mind, worried and frustrated. He acknowledged at this point that this _probably_ hadn’t been his best idea, but it was too late to back out now. There was just a little more to go before he reached the outcropping.

Keith’s feet were freezing. His boots were tight, but he swore there was snow in them. He was sitting on a rock with his hands on his left boot, ready to pull it off before he realized what he was doing. In this temperature, taking anything off would lead to immediate frostbite. “Fuck,” he muttered, putting his foot back on the ground. He shoved himself back to standing and took a deep breath. His lungs burned from the cold air. Why was he out here again? The base. Right.

“Patience yields focus,” he muttered to himself, putting one foot in front of the other. Just a little more. He stumbled over seemingly nothing and righted himself, repeating the mantra.

He finally reached the final ridge before the outcropping and let himself collapse to his knees. Inexplicably exhausted, he peeked over the ridge and spotted nothing living. Satisfied on that front, he activated his HUD’s zoom function and looked around. The first thing he spotted was what was very clearly a door in the side of the mountain. Well, guess he was in the right place.

Keith’s comm buzzed at him and he jumped, almost tumbling down the side of the ridge. “—to Keith—hear me?”

Oh. Well, here they went again. “Shiro? I read you, cutting out a little though.” Must’ve been the snow.

“Did—snow by yourself?”

Keith hung his head and sent a mental glare to Scarlet. She glared back at him, and he got the impression that if she were thinking at him in words it would be “I fucking warned you.”

“.....Yes.”

“Whyyyyy?”

Oh come on, Scarlet, if you and Kuro told him that he was off in the snow, didn’t you tell him why? He poked his head back over the ridge to continue scanning while he talked to Shiro. “We spotted an outcropping that looked suspicious, so I went to check it out.”

He could see the expression Shiro must’ve been wearing: exasperated, a hidden roll of his eyes. “Can’t—go back to Scarlet—”

Even if that was getting cut out, it was pretty clearly asking him to go back to Scarlet. “I’m already here, Shiro.”

“Fine. Check in once you get there, alright?”

Hmm, the cutting out must’ve taken out just the wrong word. “No, I’m already here. I can see what looks like a door in the side of the mountain, and there’s what looks like fake snow piled on the other side of the pass. There must be a hangar over there. This is definitely _a_ base; if it’s currently in use is another story, however.” There was a moment of silence, probably Shiro trying to decipher what he’d said through the shaky connection.

“—back to—don’t want you raiding bases alone—doing with—cold?”

Keith was about ready to admit that even if he hadn’t promised Scarlet he’d go straight back after scouting, he was probably in no shape to fight his way through an entire base.

Belatedly, he realized he had stopped shivering. “Well, I stopped shivering a few minutes ago so I think I’m getting used to it finally.”

“You _what.”_

Shiro’s voice sounded _panicked._ He never sounded panicked. What had he said? He tried to scan back through his memory but felt a spike of emotion from Scarlet that he couldn’t place. Part of it felt like horror. Panic and horror. Why panic and horror? “What? Why does Sc—”

He cut himself off with a yelp when blaster shots hit the ridge next to him. He turned and rolled down the ridge, his normal roll to his feet failing and he staggered to his feet as best he could. He felt dizzy, like he didn’t have enough oxygen, and couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t have time to worry about it, bayard materializing in his hand as he tried to charge the two Galra that had appeared around the bend of the mountain pass. He stumbled over nothing again and heard someone calling his name, but no one else was around?

The Galra were closer than they had been, and one of them seemed to be laughing. He could barely make out the Galran words, much less translate them with Scarlet still freaking out in the back of his head, but he got the gist of “too easy.” The one in front shot at him, but he managed to dodge it and knock the gun out of their hand with his bayard. They looked surprised, and he stabbed up and to the side, a killing shot. He felt a little guilty, but there was something going on that he couldn’t remember why he cared, but they couldn’t—

There was a sharp pain in his side, and someone cried out, and he suddenly found himself horizontal. Everything was even more woozy the only clear thing the _pain_ in his side and he couldn’t remember _how_ it got there but existence narrowed down to it and the cold the voices he could hear but he couldn’t understand and then it was just the pain and the cold and then the cold and the cold and the—

* * *

**Scarlet p l e a s e. Shiro and I are coming to find him, okay? I just need you to calm down a little.**

Scarlet was incoherent, her emotions swinging wildly between guilt and horror, the underlying panic spilling out into their bond, and probably into other bonds given the sheer intensity. She wasn’t forming words at him at all, not even pictures, just bursts of feeling. Kuro tried to send her soothing thoughts, but her panic was affecting even him.

It struck him that last time he had felt her like this was before Zarkon—nope, not thinking about that. He knew that once she bonded, she bonded _hard,_ but it had barely been a few phoebs that they had been with these Paladins.

**Scarlet, I need you to take a breath.**

**How am I supposed to take a breath?? I don’t have lungs!**

....Progress? At least she was forming words now. **Okay, then I need to focus on how we can help Keith, and to do that I need you to calm down. So just...visualize taking a breath.**

He got the impression that she was moving her head around, but other than that couldn't tell what she was doing. Whatever it was, she started calming down. He let Shiro take the controls and focused on Scarlet. **I need you to send me his last known coordinates, and wherever you are.** She did, and Kuro directed Shiro to them.

They flew over slowly, looking down at the outcropping.  **We really need Jade here, her sensors could get through all this snow and rock.**

“Can you pick up anything at all?”

**Well, I think I can see the hangar Keith mentioned, but only because I know it’s there.** He put up a wireframe outline of the hangar doors in the side of the pass on the HUD for Shiro’s benefit. **Other than that, we’re gonna need someone on the ground. If Scarlet couldn’t get down there, I can’t.**

“Okay. Then I guess I’m going in myself.”

**You** **_are_ ** **aware of the temperature, correct?** For good measure he displayed it on the HUD.

Shiro sighed. “I don’t really have much of a choice, do I? I’ll be careful, I promise.”

Kuro continued on over the mountains until he got to the wide area that Scarlet and Keith had landed in. She was pacing along one of the mountains that was blocking the direction Keith had gone. He landed opposite her, giving her a little space, and let Shiro out. The Black Paladin gave him a pat on the nose before he raced out through the snow in the direction of the base. Kuro, meanwhile, turned to Scarlet. **You okay?**

She didn’t answer. Kuro settled in, content to sit here and wait for Shiro to call him for a pick-up or Scarlet to talk. He could out-stubborn even her, if he wanted.

It was a long while before he heard her voice in his head: **Apart from the fact that I let my Paladin out in the cold without full knowledge of how dangerous it is to him, I’m pretty sure he got shot and captured, and he has hypothermia? Just fine thank you.**

Kuro sighed. **Scarlet, you can’t blame yourself here. He went out with full knowledge of what it entailed.**

**Yes I can!** She whirled to face him, teeth bared. **I** **_let him go._ ** **I could’ve just** **_not_ ** **opened my stupid mouth and made him wait until someone else was here! And he** **_didn’t_ ** **because he** **_doesn’t_ ** **have full knowledge of how dangerous the cold is to** **_him!_ **

**Why is the cold especially dangerous to him?**

**Because he’s half Galra!**

She froze, obviously not having planned to say that. She backpedaled into the side of the mountain, pulling herself away from their bond and closing off her mind.

**Whoa, hey, hey, Scarlet, calm down, calm down, nothing is going to happen to him because of that.**

She obviously didn’t believe him, growling in his head, her body moving like she was ready to run away or fight him.

**Scarlet.**

**No.**

**Scarlet, c—**

Kuro stopped as he felt something change with Shiro, and then Scarlet opened up again. He was blasted from both sides with _terror._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look I promise not _every_ chapter is gonna be a cliffhanger. But it was either cut it off here or cut it off after Keith passes out and I chose here bc the next chapter is already longer than most of the rest and vaguely confusing if you don't know Exactly What IS Going On like I, as the all-mighty author, do (it does get explained in the chapter _after_ it though and feel free to ask me to elaborate after it gets explained bc I'm still not entirely certain I did it right)


	3. Breakout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro finds his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how many times I've rewritten bits of this in an attempt to make it not confusing but not explain it.

Shiro had made it to the door into the base rather quickly, which had become obvious the moment it came into view. He was cold, but not to the point where he had started shivering, which was a good sign so far. He looked around for patrols, not wanting to make the same mistake Keith must’ve. Finding nothing, he put his Galran hand on the pad. Miraculously, it opened. He slipped inside and closed it behind him, then made his way down the hallway as stealthily as he could. 

If Keith wasn’t in this base, he would absolutely just take Kuro and blow it up. It was small, looked understaffed, and probably had very little useful information in it. If he had the rest of the Paladins with him he might bust it open even with Keith a prisoner. But right now his backup was some time behind him, and the base had Keith, and that was the most important thing. 

Shiro hid in a supply closet to avoid a set of sentries, tapping his finger to the time before he spotted a console across the hall that looked like it would have a map. “Pidge, Pidge, can you hear me?” he whispered into the comm. “If you can, I need you to help me hack into a console.”

“Yeah sure, but even with Jade the con—is a little fuzzy, give me a—nute. Stick your hand on the cons—?”

He did as he was pretty sure he was told and Pidge’s little hacking symbol popped up on the screen and he grinned. She made short work of the encryption, even through the snowy connection. “I’m in. Data says Kei—cell 6B, no other prisoners, map in your HUD.”

The map projected over his HUD, an arrow on the floor telling him where to turn to get to Keith. “Thanks. What’s your ETA?”

“Hu-and I about twenty minutes, Allura—Lance twenty seven to your coordinates, but if we’re doing this stealth we’re gonna need som—re to land so a little longer.”

“Alright. If things go haywire, just go where Kuro tells you.”

“Got it, Pidge out.”

Shiro took the next right, further into the mountain. The corridors were long, but surprisingly barren. A left, then another right, and he was at the cell block. He peered around the corner; there was only one sentry on guard outside the door. Keith’s bayard was visible, sitting on the console the sentry was by. This seemed almost too easy.  

Shiro darted out from behind the corner, activating his arm and slicing up through the sentry’s blaster. It squaked in alarm and turned towards him, but he kicked one of its knees out, sending it crashing downwards into his glowing hand. He turned around, tense, listening for approaching feet, but heard nothing. Picking up Keith’s bayard, he tapped through the console and opened up all the cells without even having to hack in.

_ Definitely _ too easy. 

Shiro opened the door to the cell block and checked every cell as he made his way towards 6B, way in the back. Luckily, there were no prisoners but the one he was searching for. 

When the door slid up Keith tilted his head up slightly, sluggish. He blinked and squinted, seeming like he was trying to form words but didn’t get anything more than a grunt out.

“Hey, you don’t look like you’re doing so hot.”

Keith was slumped presumably where the Galra had thrown him against the back wall, a hand clamped over his right side. His face was pale, lips tinged with blue. “‘M k’n’a num’,” he mumbled.

Shiro knelt down next to him and felt his pulse; it was too fast, his breathing too fast, his body too cold. “Well, you’re conscious, so that’s good. I’m gonna get you out of here, alright? Can you stand?” Keith shrugged, so Shiro tapped Keith’s bayard to his leg armor and shifted to pull his arm over his shoulder. Slowly, they stood up, Keith hissing when moving pulled on his side. Shiro looked down at the now-uncovered wound. It looked pretty bad, a large part of his underarmour hanging shredded from his side, angry red and purple visible beneath the hole with a small trickle of blood sneaking its way past the mostly-cauterized wound. The longer Keith spent with his system dealing with hypothermia the more likely it was to get infected or something equally bad. They needed to get back to the Castle.

“Okay, just hang on. This place seems like it’s running on a skeleton crew, but we still need to be careful.” Shiro started walking them out of the cell, keeping a careful eye on their surroundings.

“‘S’not.”

“What?”

“Not. Skeleton. I think. Trap? Th’ngs’r bl’ry.”

Shiro glanced at Keith, who had his brow furrowed in concentration. Whether it was on forming non-slurred words or trying to remember something, he couldn’t tell. “Okay, then we’ll try not to spring it,” he whispered, turning left out of the cell block.

Keith gave a weak laugh. “‘Re’dy spr’n‘f y’r here.”

They turned right and Shiro stopped them. Marching down the hall in their direction was a full contingent of senteries, a Galran lieutenant behind them. His eyes widened in alarm and he dragged Keith back around the corner. “Right. That’s not a skeleton crew.” He could still see the sentry he’d destroyed lying at the open door of the cell block.

Keith raised a shaky arm and pointed at the corridor a few paces down from them on the other side of the cell block. “Hang’r.”

“Better than that way right now,” he said, and they started walking.

They made it past two cross corridors before the lights started flashing red and the alarm screeching. Shiro broke into as much of a run as he could while still supporting Keith, trying to get them away from the troops behind them. He glanced behind them and when he turned back spotted another, smaller set of sentries barreling towards them. “Halt!” one of them commanded. 

Shiro skidded to a stop and glanced around. The last cross corridor was two dozen paces behind them; they’d get shot immediately if they tried to make it there and it could also be full of sentries by now. He glanced at Keith, who nodded, bayard materializing in his hand. He pointedly glanced at the burn on Keith’s side and slipped his arm out from under Keith’s shoulders, leaning him against the wall. “Stay. Still,” he told him, then activated his arm and charged the sentries in front of them.

He activated his arm shield and blocked the first few shots, conscious of the fact that Keith was behind him. Using the shield he bowled over the first sentry, turning and slicing his arm up through it as it fell. He rolled under another shot and sliced another’s legs out from under it, then grabbed its gun and sliced it in half. Shiro threw the broken gun at one and sliced the head off the one he had crippled, continuing the movement to cut through a torso. He kicked it over and grabbed one with his prosthetic hand, searing a print into its arm before he squeezed and cut it off. Blocking a shot from the last one with his arm he barreled into it, throwing it across the hall before he brought his hand into its chest.

He heard a cry from behind him and whirled around, then froze in terror. Keith was being held against the wall by the lieutenant they had almost run into earlier, the lieutenant’s druid-upgraded hand holding him off the ground by his throat, the other pressing a gun to Keith’s already wounded side. At his feet were several sentries, sliced to ribbons. Keith’s bayard clattered to the floor as he tried to get the hand off his throat, gasping for breath he already had too little of.

Shiro could feel Kuro, the Lion’s own determination hiding his fear. Kuro’s emotions spilled into his own, mixing and swirling until there was nothing but the determination to  _ get to Keith. _

_ “Get off my BROTHER!” _

They burst into motion. Their larger half flew after Scarlet towards the base, trailing slighly behind the Red Lion. They chomped down on a drone as it launched to intercept them while their smaller half flew at the lieutenant.

The lieutenant looked over in surprise moved his arm to attack, but he still had Keith gripped in it. Apparently deciding it was better to keep a hold on him, the lieutenant moved the hand holding the gun away from Keith. They dodged under the shots, not wanting to risk redirecting them into Keith. The lieutenant backed up from their charge, shooting again. They ducked under one shot, blocked one with their arm, and sliced the gun in half. With a growl the lieutenant finally,  _ finally, _ dropped Keith. They didn’t have time to celebrate as the lieutenant’s now free arm came swinging at them. They met it with their arm, slightly off-balance, threatening to tip to the side.

Backpedaling, they righted their balance and quickly dodged another swing then blocked an overhead strike. The lieutenant reared his arm back and thrust forward, a beam of energy blasting out at them. They yelped and dived to the side, watching as the beam burst through several walls with the force of a ship’s laser. Back on their feet they attempted to slice the arm off but simply met it with equal force as the lieutenant sent it whipping at them. They took a shot at the Galra’s side but missed, and took a hit in the stomach for their trouble.

Below them somewhere was the entrance to the hangar, under layers of rock and ice they were to big to get through. They heard a roar and suddenly Scarlet was below them, breathing fire at the offending ice and rock, melting her way through to the hangar. With a growl they activated their jawblade and rushed in to help.

Righting themselves they realized that they were right in the line of fire as the lieutenant charged up their cannon again. They activated their shield, holding it up ready to take the brunt of the blast, but the base was rocked with a roar, causing the lieutenant to stumble and the beam to head through a wall. The roar echoed in their head, combined with the feeling that this was no longer a stealth mission. 

They were finally at the entrance to the hangar, not bothering with subtlety, blasting away with a roar. Scarlet was next to them, her frantic terror sharpened to a fine point of determination to get her cub. The door finally peeled back at the corner and they dove, getting their claws into the rip. They were dimly aware of Jade, Sama, and Azul hovering above, waiting for the opportunity to drop their Paladins into the hole they had created. 

They and the lieutenant turned to face each other again, arms activated. There was a tense moment of eerie silence, then they both bust into motion. The lieutenant blocked an uppercut and came in with a roundhouse kick. They twisted into it, using the momentum to whirl around with a crane’s wing to the lieutenant’s head. It connected,  _ hard, _ sending the lieutenant sprawling. 

They turned quickly to check on Keith, who was on his knees slumped against the wall with one hand wrapped around his side, shivering hard and hacking for breath. It cost them when they missed the lieutenant coming in with a strike to their knees, causing them to hit the floor. They barely managed to block the next strike to their head. Rolling out from under the lieutenant's onslaught, they scrambled out of range and turned to face him again.

They pulled the hangar doors out of the mountain with a roar, causing a minor avalanche into the canyon below the pass. Scarlet shot past them into the hangar with a blast of fire, painting the back wall. They landed next to her, growling at the ships in front of them that weren’t slag. They bit at one that attempted to launch, catching its wing and sending it careening into the wall. The rest thought better. The three other Paladins and the princess ran into the base after them, dispatching sentries with efficiency. 

The base shook again and they and the lieutenant stumbled into the walls. Picking themself back up, their eyes widened in alarm when they saw the lieutenant’s arm cannon powering back up. They activated their shield again, prepared to take it, when suddenly the lieutenant choked and froze. He slumped, arm powering down. They could see something red and white sticking out of his chest. It moved back and the lieutenant collapsed to the floor, dead. 

Behind him stood Keith, bayard extended in his shaking hands, still gasping for breath against spasming lungs and a protesting throat. He stumbled when the base shook again and they ran to catch him. “Hey, just hold on, just a little more, almost there, just have to get to the hangar.” Keith nodded, hanging on to them with a white-knuckled grip. They shifted most of his weight onto their shoulders and hauled him forward. They sliced a sentry in half as they ran into it, unwilling to let go of Keith again.

Another roar echoed through the base and then both halves of them were in the hangar. It was weird, seeing themself in double, the smaller half still lugging the sagging Red Paladin through the battle zone the hangar had become. Their larger half was standing in the middle, back to back with Scarlet, the beacon their smaller half needed to reach. 

Keith shivered in their grip as the cold wind of the mountain whipped through the now-open hangar. They growled low, punching one sentry and continuing on to where the others were standing in a sort of circle against the Lions. They felt Scarlet growl even before she did, lowering her head and stopping throwing flame around the base. She opened her mouth and they shoved Keith inside; he managed to stumble his way up the ramp and into her hold. Satisfied that he was safe for now, they turned around and waded back into the fray. 

With a roar they stomped on a cluster of sentries and sliced through the body of one that was trying to sneak up on Allura. They turned and cut another’s gun in half, using the butt of it to smash another’s head in. They shot at a ship that was trying to escape the flames and turned to punch one that was approaching Lance. 

“Thanks, Shi—whoa, what?”

They blinked at Lance for a moment, confused on what had caused that reaction, but didn’t have time to ask as five sentries started shooting at them and Lance. They rolled for cover and ended up next to Lance behind a stack of boxes. The sentries kept coming, replacing themselves almost as fast as they could shoot them. “Everyone get in, now!” they yelled, lowering their mouth. Behind them, Scarlet roared and blasted her way out of the hangar. Allura and Hunk ran into their hold, panting with exertion. Pidge ran in next, untangling her bayard from a destroyed sentry, followed by Lance and their smaller half.

For some reason, when the rest of the Paladins saw their smaller half, they did a double-take. “Shiro?”

“Hang on!” they said, swinging themselves up into the cockpit. They had already launched out of the hangar, following Scarlet up to the Castle. The other three Lions were in formation around her; they put on a burst of speed and took up position behind her. The other Paladins all crowded into their hangar, concerned and curious. “Shiro, why are—”

Pidge was cut off as they were rocked by shots from behind. They dived and rolled, ending up below the five ships that had launched from the mostly-destroyed hangar. They activated their jaw blade and cut one in two, then grabbed the larger side and threw it into another. Diving away from a few more shots they came up below the last one and bit it, then hit the last two with the jaw blade. All five crashed into the canyon below them. 

A tense calm settled in the cockpit. “Shiro?” Lance asked.

They turned to face him. “Yeah?”

“Why—why are your eyes glowing purple-black-...something?”

They stared at him. “What?”

“Oh!” Allura said, shoving herself into their field of vision. She leaned into their space, inspecting their eyes.“They’ve unlocked the naverea!”

“The what?”

“I think it translates as one-beings? I’ll explain it once we’re back at the Castle. If I’m right, it’ll dissipate once Keith is safe.”


	4. Naverea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura provides an explanation

Once they finally landed on the Castle, in the hangar large enough to fit all the Lions, they’d let the others out and headed straight for the infirmary. 

“Oh! Well, hello there, Black,” Coran said when he saw their eyes, “Figured it’d be you that we first saw the naverea in!” 

“How’s Keith?” They peered around Coran, who was waving some Altean medical scanner over them, to look at Keith. He was lying on the examining table, stripped down to his damaged undersuit, shivering uncontrollably, curled around the wound in his side.

“Blaster burn could use a healing pod for a good number of vargas, but I don’t believe that placing him in the pods while he’s still suffering from hypothermia would be a good idea. His already cold body could interfere with the cryo process. I cleaned it up and put some special Altean salve on it to speed up the healing process and gave him some painkillers, but it’ll take almost a movement without the pods. In addition he’s got some nasty bruises on his neck that could probably use the pod too.”

They sighed in relief and closed their eyes. Shiro felt himself sway a little and drifted back to himself. He could still feel Kuro, but it was clearly over the connection, not like they were one and the same. When he opened his eyes they had stopped glowing. Coran looked up from the scanner. “Well, Bla--oh, you’re back to Shiro. Well, Shiro, you’re perfectly alright. Exhausted, definitely, but not injured or the slightest bit hypothermic.” He frowned, then muttered so low that Shiro almost couldn’t make it out: “Which is odd....”

“So we just warm him up?” Lance asked, shifting in his armor.

“I believe so, just be careful with his side. What do you humans do when one’s body temperature drops too far below the norm?”

The four Paladins looked at each other and grinned. “Meet in the common room in ten minutes?”

“I’ll go make hot chocolate.”

“Allura, do Alteans have heated blankets?”

“Here, I’ll go get your clothes so you can wear something that doesn’t have a huge hole in it.”

Shiro walked over to Keith as the other three dragged Allura out of the room. Keith looked at him quizzically, then yelped as Shiro picked him up. “D-don’t n-need to be c-carried, Shiro,” he grumbled, “mad-de it here on my own.”

“You did  _ not _ make it here on your own, Number Four,” Coran interjected, “I had to stop you from falling on your face several times and I’m pretty sure you only made it as far as you did because of adrenaline!”

“I’m carrying you,” Shiro decided for him.

Keith pouted at him, but didn’t struggle in his grip and in fact buried his face in his shoulder on the way to the common room. “Y’r warm.”

They arrived outside the common room just as Pidge did, a red bundle in her arms. Shiro set him down next to the bathroom that was next door and Pidge shoved the bundle at him. It turned out to be a set of pajamas. “Lance said these’r probably warmer than your regular clothes; they’re made for sleeping in a space-castle.”

When Lance walked into the room under a tower of blankets, he dropped them on the couch and then handed something to Keith. Keith stared at it, unable to process it. 

“Just take it, Mullet, it’s definitely warmer than yours.” The normally annoying nickname had a note of affection in it, and Keith looked up at Lance’s face. He was blushing slightly, looking away from him. Keith gingerly took Lance’s jacket and slipped it on. It  _ was _ warm, the sleeves too long and hanging over his hands. He zipped it up and snuggled into Shiro who was on his right as Lance and Allura proceed to pile blankets on top of him until he could barely sit up enough to grab the hot chocolate Hunk handed him. He was of half a mind to glare at the almost-sippy-cup he was handed, but his hands were shaking and he decided it was better than ending up with hot liquid on his lap. 

The rest of them piled onto the couches, but somehow it was silently agreed upon that Lance got Keith’s other side. Pidge was sitting against his feet, tapping away on her computer looking through the data from the base she’d manage to get before everything went to hell. Hunk and Allura were snuggled under their own blankets on the other side of the circular couch, in charge of the hot chocolate. 

“Any warmer, Keith?”

He nodded, sipping the hot chocolate while extremely thankful that Hunk had figured out how to get to taste almost exactly like Earth hot chocolate. He felt the hot liquid make its way down his throat, warmth spreading out into his limbs as he drank more. “Th-thanks.”

Shiro yawned and wrapped an arm around Keith, blankets and all. “I am  _ weirdly _ tired for barely half an hour after a battle.”

“Oh, that is one of the aftereffects of the naverea. It takes a lot of energy from both Paladin and Lion to keep their connection like that.”

“You said that word before, in Kuro,” Lance said. He shifted so he was more comfortable and ended up with his back leaning on Keith’s pile of blankets and his feet over the side of the couch. Keith tensed up for a moment, but then let it go. It was strangely nice, even if he couldn’t actually feel Lance through all the blankets beyond the weight.

“Yeah, and you said you were gonna explain it,” Pidge added, looking up from her computer.

Allura set her hot chocolate down. “Well, you all know how a lot of different bonds go into the inwastaner—”

“The what?”

Allura hesitated a moment, trying to think of the translation. “.....Tangled minds?”

“Oh, the battle meld?” Shiro clarified.

“Yes. The battle meld is its own thing, but is greatly affected by the bonds between Paladins themselves, and the bonds between a Paladin and their Lion. The naverea was first discovered by my father a few years into the first Paladins’ tenure. He and Scarlet entered the naverea during a particularly arduous battle, and only noticed when the first Black Paladin pointed it out to them by telling my father his eyes were glowing red. After that, the first generation of Paladins did a lot of experiments to figure out what caused the naverea.

“The naverea is a peculiar facet of the Paladin-Lion bond. From what my father was able to tell, it normally activates when a Paladin and Lion both feel a particularly intense emotion, or are under intense stress. Their minds intertwine and their quintessences mix, like they are one being, which is why anyone that had extended contact with Voltron formed a habit of calling those with the naverea active by their color, instead of names, as a way of differentiating. That’s why Coran called you Black earlier, Shiro.” Shiro nodded in acknowledgement. “Actions and thoughts don’t come so much from one half as the whole. They can pilot without the small delay of communication, fight with complete awareness of where the other is, completely in sync.”

“Wait, do they like—are they capable of telling themselves apart? Do they feel like they’re  _ supposed _ to be one person?”

Allura blinked at Lance. He had sat up a bit and turned to face her. “I—I believe that if they know what the state is they are capable of telling that they are in it, but only distantly. I don’t know if they feel like they’re supposed to be one person, but they certainly are close to being one.”

Lance stared at his feet for a moment, then blurted. “I think Azul and I have done the—the uh—nav-naverea? before.”

The team blinked at him. “When?”

“Do you remember that time when we caught the space-flu and it was a lot worse for Keith than the rest of us and you all had to go get more medpacks but we got jumped by Galra and Azul and I were out defending the Castle and had to eat like a million drones to open a hole for you to get back into the Castle?” Lance blinked at himself. “Wait it wasn’t—I didn’t mean eat—did I mean eat? I certainly bit—no no,  _ Azul _ bit the drones—but then why do  _ I _ remember biting them?”

Allura smiled knowingly. “Clear memories of doing something the other half did are often an aftereffect of the naverea. That certainly sounds like you managed to activate it. Do you remember how?”

“Uhhh...” Lance shifted so he was sitting normally again; Keith suddenly missed the weight. Lance looked at him and he felt pinned under the weight of his gaze. “I was really concerned about Keith, and you guys had the medpacks but couldn’t get to the Castle, and I was just so  _ angry _ and frustrated that there were all these drones in the way I just wanted them to  _ move, _ and then I remember biting the drones.”

“That sounds like an example of emotion triggering the naverea. Shiro, do you know what happened to trigger it today?”

Keith shifted slightly to look at Shiro. Shiro looked back, something he couldn’t place in his eyes. It made Keith want to wrap him up in a hug, reassure his brother that he was okay, that everything was alright now, he didn’t need to worry anymore. “Emotion,” Shiro simply said. Keith wriggled an arm around Shiro, ignoring how it made his side spike in pain, and squeezed lightly. He knew that Shiro wouldn’t elaborate more, and wouldn’t ask him to. Shiro rested his head on Keith’s and closed his eyes, a silent acknowledgement of words not said.

There was a moment of silence before Allura cleared her throat. “The naverea dissipates when whatever triggered it is gone; to use Lance’s example it likely dissipated when the danger of the pod not making it to the Castle in time to save Keith was past; for Shiro it dissipated when Keith was pronounced okay. Oftentimes, the naverea dissipates with the battle meld.

“It also has some physical effects, although nothing I know of directly affects the Lion. The Paladin has enhanced strength, the ability to see others quintessences, and their eyes glow due to the quintessence mixing, which we all saw today. The Paladin can also potentially activate some of the Lion’s powers themselves, however it requires a strong bond and a lot of power. Scarlet provides a burst of speed, Azul lets her Paladin breathe underwater—”

“I can  _ breathe underwater?” _ Lance whooped, hands in the air.

“—along with some sonic abilities. Sama can make her Paladin impervious to weapons for a brief time, Jade allows control of electromagnetic fields—”

Pidge sat up straight. “Holy shit  _ how? _ Can she do that without the naverea?”

“You’d have to ask her, I never really interacted with anyone but Scarlet before the war happened, and even then only sparingly. After the first generation of Paladins stepped down I barely got to see any of the Lions. Anyway, I’m sure the Lions have other things they can provide, but you’d have to consult Father’s notes.”

“You sk-kipped K-kuro,” Keith told her. 

Allura looked at Shiro. “Short-range teleportation.”

The expected response from Shiro never happened. Instead they received a soft snore from where the Black Paladin had fallen asleep. “Well,” Allura said with a smile, “I did say the naverea takes a lot out of a Paladin. Let him sleep.”

“In the meantime,” Pidge said, a note of reluctance in her voice, “I’m pretty sure we just sprung a trap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops I only have one complete chapter of buffer left guess I gotta get on that. (Somehow I have the _last_ chapter written but not the two or so before it)  
>  In other news, over the past week or so I've watched all five Jurassic Park/Worlds, PacRim 2, and Independence Day. Thoroughly enjoyed them all, now want to write something where the Paladins get stuck on a planet full of dinos, AND ID convinced me to finally write down a summary of what the hell is going on on Earth during the five-ish years the Paladins are in space which then led to a summary of uh...the end of all this which considering I only just got the idea for the actual overarching plot instead of random character and worldbuilding things, is gonna be a while.  
> I gotta go write a battle so have fun, ask me questions if I missed something with the naverea explanation


	5. Ready...Set....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Voltron gathers intel.

Allura deposited Shiro in his room, silently wishing him a restful sleep, and then headed up to the bridge. A few corridors down from the common room she came across Keith leaning against a wall. He was dragging the pile of heated blankets along with him, panting slightly. Worried, she pulled up next to him.

“I thought you were staying in the common room to warm up.”

“Bored,” he grunted.

She looked in the direction he was heading and realized where he was trying to get: the same place as her. She sighed, and slung an arm under his shoulders. “Alright, come on.”

They were silent during the walk to the elevator, and through the elevator ride. Only when they stepped out onto the bridge floor did he quietly mutter “Thanks.”

She gave him a small smile. “You’re quite welcome. Just promise me you won’t put any unnecessary strain on your side?”

He huffed a laugh and winced. “You’ve been spending too much t-time with Shiro.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“Yes, I won’t put strain on my s-side unless it’s abs-solutely necessary.”

“Good.”

With that the doors to the bridge opened in front of them. Pidge had a program searching through the data she had managed to collect from the base before they left and was shunting what she found over to Coran, who had it projected in the middle of the bridge. Allura set Keith down in his chair before joining Lance and Hunk at the central dais. “What do we have so far?”

Hunk turned to look at her. “Well, Pidge managed to grab most of the troop movements in this sector over the past movement. Half the fleet moved into this system and then they all moved back out.”

“Well, the _capital ships_ did,” Lanced added. “The Galra left a bunch of fighters and sentries here under the command of a general and his lieutenants. I’m pretty sure between us and Scarlet and Kuro we took out all the Galra on Kuot....”

“...but there’s another base on Dawhara itself,” Coran finished, pointing to a blinking light on a map of the system. “It’s nestled right behind the capital of Awiam. The Dawhari must know it’s there, Princess.”

Allura narrowed her eyes. “We were there merely vargas ago. Why would the Dawhari not warn us?”

“Because they s-surrendered.”

Everyone on the bridge turned to Keith. “What do you mean, they _surrendered?”_ Allura asked. Who would surrender to the _Galra?_

“Ov-verheard the lieutenant while they were dragging me over to the c-cells. Galra want-ted the metal on Dawhara and were willing to c-completely wipe them out. In exchange for surv-viving with their c-culture intact and some small b-bit of autonomy, they traded old bases, f-full access to the metal, and a plan to capture V-Voltron.”

Allura narrowed her eyes and growled low. “They should have known better. The Galra are not going to honor that agreement.”

“Nope. Lieutenant said they were gonna s-send them off to the camps as soon as they caught us. Sending one of us to check that base out was the s-start of a plan to split us up and capture us. Unfortunately for them, I don’t think they accounted for Scarlet.”

 _“Vile_ creatures,” Allura growled.

Any further conversation was cut off when the bridge started beeping that someone was hailing the castle. Coran flitted around for a moment and a viewscreen popped up on the wall. A short Dawhari appeared, their antenna twitching, feelers writhing on the ground. “Paladins, I don’t have much time,” they whispered. “I am Ahwya of the Dawhari resistance. The Galra have subjugated our planet and installed a puppet government loyal to them. I have information you might find useful, if you will help free us.”

The team glanced at each other, then back at the viewport. Stepping forward a little, Allura said: “We would be quite willing to help free your planet. Any information that could help us is welcome.”

“Uhm, how do we know we can trust it though?”

“Hunk!” Allura hissed, whirling to face him.

“What? We already had to spring Keith out of a trap he walked into because of “information” so readily handed to us.”

On screen, Ahwya nodded. “I understand the Yellow Paladin’s concerns, Princess. I am deeply sorry that our government led you into that trap, and I acknowledge that I may not be able to convince you of my sincerity. This is why I am willing to provide the information straight away. When our government surrendered to the Galra, we gave them several bases in the system. As far as the resistance can tell, they only occupied the one on Kuot, which you already encountered, and the large one behind Awiam. That base has an entrance that we don’t believe the Galra know about, hidden in the mountain pass. It is usually snow covered, and thus was rarely used when we occupied the base. I would like to offer our guidance to the hidden pass, and failing that, offer its location. I fear, however, the Galra listening in, and do not want to provide the location over an open channel.”

Ahwya’s feelers stopped moving and their antenna froze. “I cannot stay,” they hissed, “If you accept, meet me on Adan Ridge just outside the main gates to Awiam in two vargas.”

With that the viewscreen closed, leaving the Paladins in silence.

“S-someone go wake up Shiro.” 

* * *

 

Half a varga later they were all gathered in the bridge again, this time plus Shiro. Above the central dias was projected a half-complete schematic of the base on Dawhari.

“Okay, so this must be the side of the mountain with the hidden entrances, right?” Shiro said, pointing at the north side of the base.

“I mean, theoretically it could also be on the west side because Ahwya just said “mountain pass” so...” Pidge answered, resting her head on her folded hands. “But the north side makes more sense, it’s closer to the command centre and pretty far away from the hangar.”

“Assuming this schematic is correct.”

“Hey, I could only pull so much out before things went a little haywire. This is as correct as we’re gonna get it.”

“Before we plan an attack, shouldn’t we, you know, _decide if we’re accepting the offer?”_

Shiro sighed. “I don’t think we have much of a choice, Hunk.”

“What do you mean? Instead of going in the possibly-non-existent back all sneaky-like, we simply form Voltron, bust in the front, slice them all to bits, then zoom on out of there.”

“The front is the _capital,”_ Allura reminded him, “Forming Voltron will inevitably lead to destruction in the capital and the loss of innocent lives. Just because their government capitulated doesn’t mean that they all agree with it. Using this base as their base of operations was a very deliberate choice. And, even if that weren’t the case, our ability to form Voltron is currently compromised.”

The others blinked at her, confused. She sighed, and glanced pointedly at where Keith was sitting in his chair, bruises on his neck peeking out from under Lance’s jacket and an arm unconsciously covering his blaster burn.

Keith noticed this and narrowed his eyes. “Just bec-cause I’m hurt doesn’t mean V-Voltron is compromised.”

She turned to him, her best commander face on. There was a fire in his eyes, a determination, the same stubborn streak that her father had had. However much she admired it, it was not a good thing when said stubborn streak was going to land him in even more trouble than he’d already landed in. “You have a bad blaster burn in a place that is very hard to fight with, are still feeling symptoms of hypothermia, _really_ should be in a pod, and have a large hole in your undersuit. I am not deploying you on a freezing planet.”

Coran cleared his throat from his station. “Actually, undersuit’s fixed. It’s the easiest part of the armor to repair. I put it and the rest of your armor in your room.”

Allura glared at him. Whose side was he on here? “H-however!” he continued, “as the chief medical officer I do have to agree with the Princess. No fighting until you’ve spent some time in a pod, and that’s not possible until I’ve got a good look at you.”

She stood strong under Keith’s glare until Shiro’s gentle voice cut the tension in the room. “Keith, Allura’s right. You don’t want to injure yourself more, and right now your body is really susceptible to hypothermia. Being in the cold for the extended period of time it requires to reach where the hidden entrances probably are could end up hurting you beyond what even the pods can deal with.”

Keith, surprisingly, slumped back in his char, the fight gone out of his eyes. “Fine.”

“Thank you. Okay, so we take the stealth-pod down, meet Ahwya on the ridge, and follow them to the hidden path. From there, we need to take the base out systematically. What are we looking at?”

“Sentries mostly; Galra really don’t like the cold,” Coran provided, “Daibazaal was the planet closest to our star and ten thousand years of evolution doesn’t seem to have breed that out of them. Whatever command crew got left here is probably disgraced and looking for a way back into Zarkon’s good graces, which means they’re dangerous.”

“Let’s even the odds then. Pidge, if we get you in the right place, can you shut down the sentries?”

Pidge wiggled a hand. “Probably. Sentry command should be over heeeeereeeeee,” she pointed at a small room on the map, “but if they notice we’re there then control will be shifted over to the command centre only. The ships are also on a different control system than the sentries, so even if I get the sentries shut down they’ll still be able to launch.”

“So we have two teams. One heads to the sentry room, the other to the hangar. Hangar team breaks the doors. I don’t care how, as long as its stealthy and it keeps them _closed._ We want as little damage to the capital as possible. Sentry team is on Pidge defense. I’m assuming I’m with you, Pidge.” She nodded an affirmative.

“I’ll take the hangar,” Hunk said, “I’ve got a pretty good idea of how the doors work and can probably manage to stick them without even blowing anything up.”

“I’ll join Hunk, then,” Allura said.

The Paladins looked at her, then shrugged. “The more hands the better,” Shiro said. “Okay, Lance, you’re with me and Pidge then. Put those sharpshooting skills to good use.”

“Yes, Sir!” Lance grinned.

“Let’s go.”

Keith watched the team leave from his spot slumped in his chair, looking slightly dejected. One stupid mistake had put him on the bench for the rest of the mission. He should’ve been on Hunk’s team, he should’ve been watching his brother’s back.

“Cheer up, Keith! Let’s take a look at you; we’ll have you up and fighting in no time!”

He sighed, and slowly levered himself out of his seat with a wince. It was going to be a _long_ however long it would take for Coran to pronounce him pod-ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello I didn't write nearly as much of this fic over the past two days as I meant to bc I got distracted Plotting >:)  
> There are many things to look forward to (as soon as I iron out one uhhh kinda large detail) and I apologize way in advance for one part bc its. hehehehe. It's a downright evil idea.  
> But! I like the next two chapters they're gonna be fun!  
> Fun for me probably not for you!


	6. Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Voltron puts their plan into motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI! I'm gonna be at orientation the majority of tomorrow (and half of tuesday) and won't really have time to post so guess what new chapter day early!!!! ~~I also finished this chapter late last night and was jittery excited and really wanted to post it so much that you almost got two chapters yesterday~~

Shiro parked the stealth pod under an overhang just outside sensor-range, hoping to keep at least some of the snow off of it, and made his way out of the pod. Behind him, Pidge looked at the map and turned in a slow circle. “Ridge should be that way,” she said, pointing off to the north-west, “probably only half a klick of walking.”

“Lead the way,” he gestured, and stepped in line next to Allura. Shiro watched his team trudge on through the snow, Lance and Hunk having a quiet but lively discussion about something he couldn’t quite make out, Pidge occasionally turning around and adding a snarky comment. 

This was the first time he’d been on a Voltron mission without Keith by his side. It was weird, not seeing a familiar flash of red and black in the corner of his vision, charging ahead to clear a path for the others, not being back to back with his brother while fighting for their lives.

What had happened that Keith’s suit hadn’t protected him? Why did he get hypothermia while none of the rest of them did? Shiro had been out in the cold for just as long as him, and yet Coran had pronounced him just fine. Maybe he was sick again? But then Coran would’ve caught it, right?

“Stop worrying, he’s fine.”

Shiro turned to look at Allura. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

She shrugged. “You have a “worried older brother” look.”

He sighed and turned back to watch the others. “I just can’t figure out why he went hypothermic but I didn’t, and that worries me.”

“There was probably something wrong with his suit.”

“Something we didn’t catch? Something the suits systems and the Lions wouldn’t warn us about? I find it hard to believe.”

“If it was small enough it could easily have been missed. A small tear, not enough to fully decompress but enough to let the elements in, could possibly not trip any maintenance alerts.”

Shiro frowned, unconvinced. “I’m going to have a look at it when we get back.”

“Shiro, it could’ve been in the destroyed part of his undersuit. Don’t go eating eshil. Stop worrying about him, he’s going to be fine. I’m willing to bet Coran will have him in a pod before we even reach the ridge.”

Shiro made a noncommittal noise, but let it drop. Worrying about Keith meant he wasn’t focusing on the mission. All mother-henning could wait until they’d freed this planet.

Eventually they reached the ridge, but Ahwya was nowhere to be seen. “Pidge, scan around, we need to see—”

“Paladins! Over here!”

Shiro turned to see an unfamiliar Dawhari waving a feeler at them from behind an outcropping. Cautiously he made his way over, the rest of the team following. “Who are you?”

“This is Hywya,” Ahwya said, appearing behind the other Dawhari. Shiro recognized them as the Dahwari that had been hovering around him while loading supplies into Kuro. “He knows the mountains better than I, and thus is coming along as another guide. We should get moving, Paladins, the mountains are dangerous at night.”

* * *

They trekked up and around the city, following the mountain paths until Hywya stopped in front of them and turned around. His antenna twitched, scanning the area. “Here is where we need to go...offroad.” He shifted a large rock in the side of the pass, revealing a very thin pathway. Lance peered at it, and the very little support underneath it. It was more like an ice shelf precariously stuck on the side of the mountain than an actual path.

“Uh, are you sure? That doesn’t look....safe.”

Hywya glanced at him. “It is the only way to the hidden entrance. Even us Dawhari do not like to go this way, which is why we believe the Galra do not know about it. But, if we are to free our planet, we must.” Hywya then trundled onto the path, going slowly as he could, a few of his feelers attaching themselves to the face of the mountain, somehow finding holds on the ice.

“Cheater,” Lance mumbled, but followed after Shiro onto the path.

The path got narrower and narrower the further away from the pass they got, eventually to the point where the Dawhari were clinging to the wall and the Paladins were shuffling sideways. The wind whipped at them, throwing snow in their faces and chilling them even through the suits. Lance considered how cold  _ he _ was, and was suddenly very glad that Shiro had convinced Keith to stay on the Castle. 

“How much longer do we have to do this?” Lance called over the wind.

“Only a few fractions of a hawdi,” one of the Dawhari, Lance couldn’t tell, answered him.

“Yeah, Pidge, how long is that in a unit I can understand?”

“A fourth of a klick?”

“Thanks,” he said. He took another step but somehow, his foot kept going. He tilted to the side and then he was  _ falling through the air _ falling off the mountain and the path had broken under his feet and he was screaming and flailing to catch something but he couldn’t—

And then there was a hand wrapped around his wrist and someone was yelling at him to activate his jetpack. 

Oh right, his jetpack. He activated it and the hand on his arm dragged him onto the path as he rose back up. He leaned against the wall, sucking in a huge breath of air. “Thanks.”

Hywya released his hand. “Anytime, Paladin. Apparently this part of the path has started to deteriorate. We will need to be extra careful.” The Dawhari turned and slipped over Shiro’s head again.

Shiro put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a little—Just a little shaken.”

Shiro nodded at him. “Guess we’ll just have to watch our step a little better. Pidge, Hunk, Allura, can you get over that gap?”

“Gonna have to jetpack it, but yeah.”

“Careful with your landing, we don’t want to take the entire path down with us.”

Lance shuffled further along the path, watching his feet the entire time. That meant he was looking down, and he was  _ not appreciative. _ He couldn’t even see the bottom of the mountain, just a blur of grey and white beneath his feet. The wind quieted slightly, becoming an eerie low whistle. Carefully, he stepped over a missing piece of the path.

“We’re here,” Hywya shortly said. The path had widened slightly, jutting out into a small landing-like area around a spot on the mountain that had a noticeably thinner coating of ice. Ahwya clambered over all their heads to get to the door. One of their feelers slithered through a small crack in the ice and wrapped around a rock. With a quick tug, the rock moved and the door silently slid open, taking the ice with it.

“Thank you, Ahwya, Hywya,” Allura said from somewhere behind Lance, “I believe we will be able to take it from here.”

Ahwya gave a half bow from where they were still clinging to the ice above the door. “If you ever need us, Princess, we will be here.”

Shiro turned to the team. “Everyone remember what they’re doing?” He was greeted with a chorus of determined yeses, then stepped through the door.

Lance followed the Black Paladin through and was immediately struck by how  _ warm _ the base was. It must’ve been almost forty degrees celsius warmer than outside. The familiar purple light filtered through the halls, even this far back where nobody was. Pidge creeped in front of him, a map projected on her gauntlet. “Okay, Hunk, Allura, take the left path and just keep as straight as you can. You should end up in the hangar control room. Lance, Shiro, follow me.”

* * *

Allura and Hunk made it to the hangar control room surprisingly without incident. “We haven’t run into a single sentry,” Allura whispered, “that doesn’t seem right.”

“Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Allura,” Hunk said, closing the door behind them. He scanned the room, looking for the right control panel. “Although, it is a little weird that there isn’t even anyone in here.”

“Look a what in the mouth?”

“A gift—uh, you know what, I don’t think I can even explain the idiom. Don’t be ungrateful for something good.” 

“Well, we don’t have any Galra tech to activate the consoles without a sentry,” Allura said, moving to the window. The hangar doors were closed, luckily, the ships sitting idle in their docking ports.

“Actually, I don’t think we even need to activate the consoles, just open them up.” Hunk knelt in front of the main console and pulled the front off. “If I can just hotwire this....”

Allura glanced at him and then back out at the hangar. Something seemed off about what she was seeing. All the bays were filled, the hangar was all the way closed, the wiring was retracted...

Oh. Those ships were launch ready.

“Hunk, Hunk, we need to get out of here.”

“I haven’t even started,” Hunk mumbled, “Okay so that red wire—”

Red lights started blinking in time with the blaring alarm and the hangar doors started moving.

“Hunk!”

“I didn’t do anything!”

Allura dived for the control console but of course it didn’t work, neither of them was Galra and they didn’t have any Galra tech. The two of them watched in horror as the doors opened fully and every single ship, dozens of them, launched.

* * *

Lance waved goodbye to Hunk and Allura and followed Pidge down the path to the right. They stayed silent and low, twisting along the outside of the base and staying away from the more populated areas.

He was a little concerned about how they didn’t seem to run into  _ any _ sentries. Normally this sort of mission had them hiding in cross corridors or janitor’s closets for at least a little bit, tapping out the pattern Shiro had taught them all, or forced them to destroy one set of sentries to open a path. But they hadn’t run into a single one. 

They didn’t run into a single sentry the entire time it took them to get to the sentry control room. There wasn’t even a  _ guard. _ Lance caught Shiro’s eye. He seemed to be thinking the same thing: something was wrong here. As Shiro let them in the door, Lance turned and scanned the hallway, bayard out. It was eerily quiet, not even the clanking of boots.

“Lance, get in here,” Shiro whispered. He sounded tense.

Lance backed into the room, keeping his bayard out the entire time. The door closed in front of him and lowered his bayard slightly. “Pidge, do you have any idea what’s wrong here?”

Pidge was furiously tapping away on her gauntlet. “Not until I have access.”

“Giving you access could tip them to our location, and there’s  _ something _ I don’t trust going on right now.”

“It could’ve tipped them before we didn’t run into any sentries, and you already used it to let us in here.” Shiro seemed to consider this a valid point and obligingly put his hand on the console. It winked to life, and Pidge got to work. Lance trained his attention on the door again, ready to blast whoever came through it unannounced.

He didn’t know how much time passed before Pidge said “What the hell?”

Turning, Lance saw that she had pulled up a map of the sentry locations. They were darker purple dots on a purple map, clustered in three distinct areas. None of them were moving. “What are they doing?”

“That set is in the command centre, but there’s something...wrong about it. That group is...beneath the hangar? And that one is...” Pidge turned and looked at the door. “Right there.”

Red alert lights started blinking in time with the alert siren and the map shut down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cough cough* [Unspoken Plan Guarantee](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnspokenPlanGuarantee)


	7. Break In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a fight. Does it go well? Does it go poorly? Who knows!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello I'm so sorry this is late orientation fucking _wiped_ me and I just Could Not Write on wednesday and despite the fact I wrote 3000 words yesterday it wasn't finished by the time it was 2200 and my brain refused to write more battle scenes.  
>  BUT my computer came! So this is coming to you from my ~snazzy new computer~ that I spent yesterday morning outfitting everything I am capable of customizing with Iron Man red lmao  
>  ~~seriously I love this thing so much i'ts the only computer in the house that is capable of running minecraft without being slow as f u c k. It might be doing something...weird to chrome though. to "justify" microsoft's claim that chrome is slower than edge which uhhhh I don't care???? I have like ten years of customization in my chrome profile I ain't shifting that Give Me Chrome~~

Ahwya closed the door behind the Paladins and dropped down to the path. They stared at the now hidden door, at the reflection of the setting sun in the ice.

“We should be getting back,” Hywya said behind them.

“Do you think they’ll succeed?”

There was a moment of silence.

“No.”

“Why not?” Ahwya said, turning.

They froze in place, staring at the barrel of the gun being held to their head.

“Because the Galra know they’re there. Resisting them was a  _ stupid _ idea. The Empire cannot be beaten, not even by Voltron.”

The shot couldn’t be heard over the wind.

Hywya kicked Ahwya’s lifeless body into the grey abyss below the path and watched it disappear. He took a deep breath of the cold dusk air. One feeler rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a small communicator. “General Roguvi. They are in.”

“Good. This had better work, Hywya, for not only yours but your planet’s sake.”

“It will work.”

“I was told the _ last _ plan to split them all up and capture them one by one would work, but then  _ something _ happened. If this does not work, you will pay.”

The comm clicked off. Hywya took another deep breath. This was what was best for his planet. It had been nothing to remind Ahywa of the existence of the entrances not on the plans, nothing to lead them here, to gain their trust. 

It was nothing, it  _ had _ to be nothing, because if it wasn’t, then Dawhara was nothing.

* * *

Keith sat on the examining table in the med bay, wishing he could cross his arms. He’d had them crossed for the better part of the past little over two vargas, stewing in his own guilt at getting hurt and attempting to block out the cold. The Castle was permeated with the normal cold of a spaceship and it was all the more noticeable to Keith right now. He couldn’t, however, cross his arms as Coran was poking at his side and changing the bandages. “Have to have fresh bandages if you’re going in the pod,” Coran had said, gently pushing him onto the table.

So now he was sitting here, arms awkwardly held out of Coran’s way, shirtless and jacketless, in the colder than he wished it was medbay of the Castle, while the rest of the team was out on a mission. 

“How much longer?”

“Oh, not that long now! Your temperature’s still a little low but not dangerous to put in the pods. Once we’ve finished with the bandages you should be good to go!”

Keith sighed, the outrush of air floofing his bangs up slightly. It had taken entirely too long so far. He was  _ tired _ of sitting here,  _ tired _ of barely moving so he didn’t aggravate his side,  _ tired _ of being cold and he’d been cold since he  _ got on  _ this stupid fucking space Castle and he just wanted the freedom to be back on the training deck or hell, right now he’d even take being on a mission in the freezing cold if it meant he could  _ run. _

And then the proximity alert started beeping and Keith kinda wished he could take that thought back.

Coran jolted upright and Keith attempted to follow him, only to be held down on the bench. He huffed, but stayed. For now. He watched Coran sprint over to the display panel in the wall and quickly pull up the feed from the control room. Dozens of ships were streaming towards the Castle from Dawhara, others were hovering in the capital city. Something had gone wrong.

Ignoring the sensible part of himself, Keith launched off the table and through the door to the med bay. Coran yelled something at him that was undoubtedly a reprimand, but he didn’t stop to listen. Scarlet was growling in the back of his head, a wordless worry for both the team and him. As he skidded into his room and threw his pants in the general direction of the bed in order to slip into his flightsuit her growl coalesced into words.

**What are you** **_doing?_ **

**Helping.**

**You’re** **_injured._ **

**And if I don’t go help,** **_more_ ** **people are going to be injured.** He pointedly ignored his side’s reaction to him hefting his chestplate over his head.

**Keith—**

**There are civilians in that city and I can almost guarantee you that not all of those ships are headed for the Castle. The team is in that base and they may not have the capability to deal with the ships depending on their situation. Therefore, you and I are the logical choice.**

Scarlet sighed over the connection.  **....Emergency preflight checklist completed, and I did your full armor checklist for good measure.**

Keith grinned and turned out of his room towards the Lions’ hangar.  **Did you start doing that even before I got my armor on?**

He sensed her decline to answer that.  **As much as I enable your recklessness, I do worry, so I would** **_appreciate it_ ** **if you didn’t do anything** **_horrible_ ** **this time.**

**I’ll try.**

**_Do or do not, there is no try._ **

**Very funny, Yoda.**

**I’m being serious, cub.**

Keith whipped around the corner into the hangar to find her standing before the open doors, a low growl permeating the room as she lowered her head. Her warm hello met his mind and fingertips as he swung himself into the cockpit.

“I know you are. I won’t.”

With that they shot out of the hangar into the atmosphere of Dahwara. Immediately they were set upon by a squadron of drones. Keith wrenched the controls down, fighting the atmosphere and diving under the bellies of the twelve ships. He glanced at the radar and then peered out the top of the viewscreen; the squadron had started to turn towards him. With a feral grin he pulled them up hard and lined up the squadron in firing range. Scarlet breathed a blast of flame, melting the first two drones instantly and burning the next five. She shot forward and bit one of the burnt ones, throwing it into the path of one of the undamaged ones and causing it to spiral into the mountain.

A shot rocked off her right side and Keith grunted as her pain melded with his own. He twisted them around and brought the tail canon into play, shooting one of the undamaged ships as Scarlet bit another. She activated her jawblade and sliced through two more as Keith dodged more shots that were suddenly coming from above. Another two squadrons had noticed the dogfight and joined the fray. As good a pilot as he was, he was  _ not _ taking on three squadrons alone right now. All he could do was lead them away from civilians. Keith twisted Scarlet around away from the capital and put on a burst of speed. Both squadrons followed them, taking potshots at her rear thrusters.

As fast as Scarlet was, she wasn’t the most aerodynamic of vehicles, especially compared to the drones. Keith glanced at the radar; the drones were getting steadily closer. An idea popped into his head and he pulled Scarlet out of the atmosphere. All the squadrons followed him.

“Coran!” he yelled into the comm, “A little help?”

“What the  _ quiznak _ are you doing!”

“Lining them up, heading six point three five.”

Scarlet approached the Castle on a course five degrees right from where he’d told Coran, all the drones still following him. Blasts bounced off the Castle’s deflector shield as Keith dodged as many blasts as he could. Just before they ran into the shield, Keith pulled left. Six drones crashed into the shield, unable to make the turn without Scarlet’s maneuvering jets. The rest followed through the turn, then ran directly into where Coran had started blasting with the Castle’s defenses. All but three were destroyed. Keith turned Scarlet around and blasted the last three with the tail canon.

Scarlet weaved around the Castle back into Dawhara’s atmosphere. Three more squadrons were making their way up to the Castle, while the last was visibly hanging back over the capital. As he watched, one fired on the capitol building.

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to come back?” Coran’s heavy sigh filtered over the comm.

“Not while there’s civilians in danger. Can you handle the squadrons?”

“Oh yes, Castle’s defenses are holding steady. Just be careful, Keith.”

“When am I not?”

He could  _ feel _ the glare from both Coran and Scarlet. Okay, maybe it was justified, but it was always for good reason. Like the civilians down there that were going to be subject to an avalanche if he didn’t deal with those ships. 

Keith pushed the controls and Scarlet bounded down towards the city. They dodged a drone, shot at another, and sped through the formation, backwash from Scarlet’s engines throwing several drones off course.

They made a beeline for Awiam. A few of the drones hovering above the city turned to face them, while the rest spread out from the base’s hangar. Keith only realized that he didn’t have a plan for getting the drones away from the city when he had to dodge one’s shots as he watched another fire at the capitol building again. They were close enough now to see the Dawhari in the streets, screaming as shots rained down on the government buildings, trying to find cover. Just shooting the drones meant more debris on the poor civilians and potential loss of life, so that was out of the question. But, the longer they sat in the air trying to come up with a plan, the closer the drones came to causing an avalanche.

Beneath his hands Scarlet growled. Keith lifted his hands off the controls, a wordless gesture of assent to whatever she was planing. She shot forward and bit the drone that was shooting at the capitol building. Then, keeping it between her jaws, she headed towards the nearest wall and threw the drone into the ground just outside the city walls. Keith smiled. That would work, assuming they could get to the drones before they caused more havoc. 

This, apparently, was a challenge. Keith felt the happy growl as Scarlet turned around and bit the nearest drone. She continued forward and impaled two more on her front claws, dropping all three over the wall on the opposite side of Awiam. She rolled and came up below one that was attempting to get in position to attack her. With a yell she bit it, shook it around, and tossed it over the wall. She dived into the streets of the city and landed on a drone, smashing it into a sparking mass on the ground. One drone dived at them and Keith grabbed the controls again, wrenching them up and around to bite it. With it in her mouth, Keith directed her to stab another one with her claws and they dropped both of them outside the walls.

The four remaining drones seemed to catch on to what was happening. One directed itself to the capitol building, while the other three converged on them. Blasts pummeled Scarlet’s snout as Keith weaved them out of the way, looking for a way through to the capitol building. One of the towers emitted a cloud of dust and wobbled slightly. With a growl Keith pushed the controls and Scarlet slammed into the nearest one, sending it careening down into the streets. She bit one and impaired the second to last with the remains of the one in her mouth. Not bothering with clearing the walls anymore, they dropped them in a clear square and dashed through the air for the last drone. 

Ahead of them, the main tower of the capitol building wobbled. The last drone continued shooting at its base. It almost seemed like it fired faster the closer Scarlet and Keith got to it. With a roar Scarlet bit the last drone, crushing it between her jaws. They turned around to throw it beyond the wall, but an ominous crack echoed from the tower. Eyes wide, Keith turned Scarlet around. The tower wobbled visibly, and then tilter too far in one direction. An alert popped up on one of the consoles: there were people in that tower. 

Dropping the drone, Keith thrust the controls forward just in time to catch the tower on Scarlet’s back. They both winced in pain, plating crushed under the weight. Snow fell off of the tower and into the streets below. Keith stared at it for a moment, then took a deep breath. He let it out and activated Scarlet’s maneuvering thrusters, pushing slowly up and forward. Steadily, the tower moved back to upright position. It wobbled slightly, but Scarlet pushed it back slightly to lean against the mountain. Slowly Keith disengaged them, pulling back. He turned his head around when he heard a scraping sound, and discovered an icicle retreating from a hole in Scarlet’s back.

“Those are sharp, then.”

**Tell me about it.**

Keith tapped at the sensors once Scarlet was fully freed from the tower, scanning it. Deeming it capable of staying upright at least until the battle was fully over, he pulled them away and poked Scarlet’s diagnostics. Beyond the minor hole and crushed armor in her back, she had multiple crushed plates and burn marks all over her snout. Fixable, but not enjoyable.

**How you feeling, girl?**

**Like I have a hole in my back. I didn’t even realize that** **_ice_ ** **could do that.**

**Well, if you put enough weight behind it.**

She gave a noncommittal noise and he got an image of code that he took to be her self-healing programs. Taking that as a sign she was okay, Keith poked the comm button. “Coran, how you doing up there?”

“Just—boy! I’ve got—upied—care of team!”

* * *

General Roguvi glared at the map. The Red Lion had single handedly destroyed the squadron that had been attacking Awiam, and led three more to their doom at the hands of the Castle of Lions. The group of Paladins in the sentry control room had managed to lock the door somehow, and the ones in the hangar were easily fighting off the sentries he had sent. This was not going according to plan.

“Lieutenant Nuz,” he growled into the commlink, “proceed.”

Outside, Lieutenant Nuz smiled. “With pleasure.” She turned her arm into a sniper rifle and aimed. Through the scope she could see Hywya, clinging to the path in terror. The ruins of several Imperial drones smoked in the valley below. She held a breath, and then Hywya fell into the chasm below without a sound. “Complete, Sir.”

“Make your way back inside. The sentries need a little help with the control room.”

* * *

Keith and Scarlet flew into the mouth of the base just next to the capitol building. There were concerning flashes of blue and purple light in the hangar control room. They set down in the middle and a group of sentries ran out of a door. Scarlet calmly spit a burst of fire at them, melting them into a puddle of molten metal. A blast of blue shattered the window of the control room, giving Keith an idea for how to handle the rest of the sentries. He opened the comm and yelled “Allura! Hunk! Jump out the window!”

Both Princess and Paladin turned to look out the window and came face to face with the Red Lion. Twin looks of surprise graced their faces before Scarlet opened her mouth and growled low. They ran for the window, dodging blasts, and jumped. Scarlet breathed fire into the control room, causing the doors to emergency seal and incinerating the sentries within.

Down on the ground, Allura and Hunk shut off their jetpacks and stepped away from Scarlet’s fire.

_ “Keith! Get your quiznaking ass down here!” _

**Oh boy.**

**Bear in mind you brought this upon yourself,** Scarlet told him, stepping back slightly and lowering her head next to Allura and Hunk. Keith jogged out of Scarlet’s mouth and was immediately greeted with an Allura. She marched straight up to him, eyes narrowed, staff held tight at her side, a very imposing figure.

_ “What happened to no unnecessary strain?!” _

“I deemed it necessary! People were going to die if those ships weren’t dealt with and the Castle was swamped and then I was worried about what happened in here so I came to help if I can.”

Allua looked very much like she wanted to slap him. “I have half a mind to send you right back up to the Castle right now.”

“Well you’re gonna have to wait until Scarlet’s self-healing mechanisms fix the hole in her back from the icicles.”

“The  _ what?” _ Hunk asked.

Keith shrugged. “Apparently they’re sharp.”

Allura pinched the bridge of her nose. Keith was pretty sure she’d picked that gesture up from Shiro. “Fine. We have no idea what happened to Shiro’s team and need all the help we can get. But you are  _ not fighting if you can help it.” _

She turned on her heel and stalked off towards one of the doors. Hunk and Keith followed after her, almost running to keep up with her stride. 

* * *

Meanwhile, in the sentry command centre, Lance was getting mildly bored. This was saying something, considering he was currently standing guard with full knowledge that there was a group of sentries trying to break through.

“Pidge, how much longer is this gonna take?”

“I don’t  _ know, _ Lance, whatever they used to lock us out is tricky.”

“But you’re the master hacker! You’ve got to have  _ some _ idea!”

“I don’t know, half an hour?”

Lance humphed, but turned his attention to the door again.

“Piiiidgeeeeee how much longer?”

“Lance? Shut up.”

“But Piiiiiiiiiiidgeeeeeeeeeeeeee--”

“Lance. Let her focus.”

A flash of light caught his eye, but when he tried to focus on it there was nothing. Blinking and shaking his head to clear it of the boredom glaze, he focused on where it had come from. The light blinked again, this time for longer. He scooted forward slightly and peered at it. It was coming from the very tiny gap between the door and the wall.

The light blinked again, even longer, and Lance suddenly realized what it probably was.

“Piiiiiiidgeeeeee?” he asked, drawing it out in apprehension.

_ “What, _ Lance.”

“How much longer are these doors gonna hold?”

She blinked at him. “Forever, possibly. I set up an algorithm that keeps the access code generating at over a thousand times a second and linked it so only Shiro’s arm knows the code. Realistically, though, a longer than it’ll take me to finish this  _ if you stop talking to me.” _

“Yeah what about if they bring a laser torch or something that’ll cut through the door. A lightsaber.”

“What?”

The light blinked again, and then there was a sizzling sound and the metal of the door seemed to bend inwards slightly.

“Oh fuck.”

“Yeah! What do we do, Pidge! Shiro, what do we do!”

Pidge yanked Shiro’s arm off the console and tapped something on his gauntlet. A complete map of the compound projected above it. “Okay, uhhh, we need a way out of one of the most secure places in the compound. Vents? There’s gotta be vents, probably retrofitted too because the Galra need the heating a lot more than the Dawhari which means they might be big enough to fit through. Lance, do you see anything on the walls? Grates of any kind?”

Keeping one eye on the door, Lance looked around the room. “There’s something on the north wall, but it doesn’t look like even you could fit through.”

“Damnit. Okay. This base is two levels, apparently, so we could cut through the floor and try from there.”

Shiro peered at the floor. “I don’t know if my hand is powerful enough to cut through this metal. They seem to be having a lot of trouble with the door and most of this base is made out of the same material.”

Pidge studied the map again. “Yeah, and it looks like cutting through here is gonna land us pretty close to the command centre. If we’re sneaky we  _ could _ cut around to the hangar the other way, but we’d probably make too much noise getting down there. Oh, what is that room...” She trailed off, looking at something.

Lance glanced at her and then back at the door. It was glowing slightly with heat, the Galra melting their way through. “We could call Hunk and Allura?”

Shiro shook his head. “They’re probably dealing with something similar. No guarantees there.”

There was a pause.

“So we just open the door.”

“What? No! That’s the opposite of what we want!”

“Lance, that door’s the only way out of here. If we open the door right now, then we have the element of surprise. We can either bottleneck them at the door, or we can make a break for it. It’s probably our best chance.”

Lance humphed at Shiro. “Fine.”

“Okay. I’ll take point and open the door. Lance, you open fire immediately, take down as many as you can. Pidge, see if you can get whatever is slicing through that door. Once we create an opening, we run like hell. On three.” They nodded, and moved into position. Shiro stood by the control panel, Lance and Pidge in front of the door.

“One, two,  _ three!” _ Shiro slammed the door and Lance opened fire with a yell. One Galra yelped and dived out of the way, while all the sentries behind her met their demise. More quickly filled the gap, forcing Lance and Pidge to dive and roll to dodge. Shiro twisted around the corner and sliced through one group of sentries then rolled under another and sliced through two more.

Lance stepped out the door and opened fire on the opposite side that Shiro was fighting on. Beside him Pidge quickly scanned the corridor and spotted the Galran Lieutenant, running behind a group of sentries. She shot out her grappling hook and tripped the Lieutenant, sending her crashing into the floor. She quickly got back up and turned, a sneer on her face, blood leaking from her nose. “You’ll pay for that, Paladin.”

Shiro punched a sentry, tossing it into another one, and grabbed another’s gun. He fired into the sentries that were approaching him, taking down several before he was forced to drop it and hit the closest one before it shot him. 

Then, somewhere in front of him, there was three very familiar battle cries. 

Keith broke into a run as soon as he heard Lance’s battle cry. He saw blaster fire hit the side of the corridor and skidded around the corner to find the three other Paladins blasting sentries with all they had. The sentries between him and Shiro had no idea he was there.

With a yell he lunged forward and skewered a sentry, then ripped it around to slice through two more. Next to him Allura whipped her staff around and crushed the head of one as she sent it flying into another. Hunk stepped into the gap and opened fire, focusing on the sides so as to not hit the other Paladins. Keith activated his shield and used it to bash one. Whipping his sword up and around he destroyed three more and on his right Allura stabbed her staff through two and flung them into Hunk’s line of fire. Ahead of them, Shiro punched two more and activated his shield as well, holding it up against the rain of blue and purple fire. 

Between the four of them the remaining sentries on that side of the corridor were easily dispatched. The other side, however, was still filled with sentries, not to mention the Galran lieutenant. Lance and Pidge were hiding behind their shields while trying to fight, but for every sentry they destroyed, more filled the gap. The Lieutenant stood behind her sentries, holding her bloodied nose and shouting orders. 

“What are you  _ doing, _ Keith?” Shiro hissed, holding him back with a hand on his shoulder while Allura and Hunk rushed forward to help Pidge and Lance.

“Helping.”

“You’re still  _ injured. _ I can see you favoring your side slightly.”

“Yeah, and a lot more people were going to be if I didn’t come and help.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes at his brother. “We are talking about this later. I’ve already been terrified for you too much for one day.”

They turned to face the enemy and immediately dived backwards out of the way of a cannon blast. It hit the corridor floor where they had been standing, creating a hole that spanned the width of the hallway. Dust shook from the ceiling of the corridor. Keith jumped to his feet, shield activated and bayard in his left hand. His eye immediately caught on the Lieutenant. Her arm cannon was activated at full force, much like the other Lieutenant’s had been. She had an evil grin on her face, and was aiming over the heads of the other Paladins.

“Move move move!” Shiro yelled. He and Keith towards the hole, but another blast destroyed more of the corridor floor. The opposite end of the hole bowed downwards, support removed. They weren’t going to make it but had too much momentum to stop so they  _ jumped _ but the lieutenant easily fired again straight for them. Keith brought his shield up and it deflected straight up into the ceiling but the momentum shift threw him backwards. He hit the floor and when he rolled to a stop he saw cracks in the ceiling and dust ominously falling. Scrambling, he got to his feet and ran out of the way just as the ceiling caved in where he had been standing, completely blocking that direction.

Only then did he realize he wasn’t in the same corridor.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if we're being honest I only managed to write this chapter bc discord was dipping in and out of down all day yesterday and I didn't have the capability to be distracted haha  
>  _hopefully_ next chapter on saturday and last chapter possibly that day too depending on how much I wanna add to what I already have written of it.


	8. Level Up (While Going Down)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is blocked from the rest of the paladins by a pile of rubble, more injured than he was, Shiro’s stuck on the other side, and the other four still have a lieutenant to deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mean to spend the weekend writing this? Yes  
> Did I instead spend the weekend drawing Keith? _absolutely_ (see this is why I usually have things completely finished before I post any of them, so I can actually stick to a schedule and get distracted.)  
>  and did I THEN stay up until at least 0300 last night reading aragorn-centric sickfic? also yes  
> so here have a definitely-not-enough-sleep, period cramp influenced battle of awesomeness.

Pidge jerked her head up from where she’d dived to avoid the blast when she heard Shiro screaming Keith’s name. She could just barely see Keith, lying in the corridor below, before a rock obscured her vision. Ahead of her, Shiro scrambled out of the way and activated his jetpack, sending him hurtling into the lower corridor and out of her view. She scrambled to her feet and ran for the hole but they were both too far away too far even with the jetpack she couldn’t  _ reach them _ before the ceiling completely collapsed, cutting the two Paladins who might as well have been her brothers off from the rest of them.

_ “Keith! Shiro!” _

A harsh laugh echoed behind her. Pidge turned and glared at the lieutenant. Without so much as a warning she shot out her grappling hook. The lieutenant easily dodged it and smirked at her. “Gonna have to do better than that, Paladin.”

Pidge smirked back. With a tug her bayard recoiled and the sentry she had impaled slammed into the lieutenant from behind. She stumbled forward under the force, collapsing to one knee. With a growl she pulled the edge of the bayard from her back with her druid-upgraded hand and threw it back at Pidge. 

Lance and Hunk opened fire then with twin yells, strafing the corridor and taking down sentry after sentry. “Careful of the ceiling! We don’t need another cave-in!” Allura yelled over the comm.

Pidge joined her at the edge of the collapsed floor, holding her shield up to protect them from stray shots. “Shiro! Keith!”

There was a crackle over the comm, followed by an “I’m okay, little dusty, but I can’t find Keith.”

“Pidge, scan the rubble, he’s got to—”

Allura was cut off by a hacking cough over the comm. “I’m alive.”

Pidge let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. They were both alive. “Keith? Where are you?”

“Other side of the rubble I think?”

Pidge scanned the rubble, looking for a way through for Shiro more than anything else. Keith’s armor indeed showed up on the far side of the rubble, while Shiro was almost directly beneath them. Her scan didn’t pick up anything large enough for anything bigger than a squirrel. “I don’t think either of you can get through there, and we don’t have the capability to move the rubble. You’re gonna have to meet us somewhere. The map says the only ways between the levels are the stairwells by the hangar and the command centre.”

“I’ll pick the hangar, then. Don’t wanna storm the command centre without all of us.”

Pidge projected the map from her gauntlet again. “Yeahhhhh about that. Because of the layout of the second floor, to get to the hangar Keith’s gonna have to go through the command centre.”

A shot bounced off Pidge’s shield. Allura turned to face the battle again, gripping her staff. “Keith, don’t you dare.”

“Little late for that I think,” Keith whispered, “there’s a group of sentries just around the corner. I think they heard the collapse. I’ll see you at the hangar.”

“What,  _ Keith, no.” _

The Red Paladin didn’t respond. Shiro’s growl of frustration made its way over the comm. “Double time, then. I’ll see you soon, hopefully with all of us in one piece.” Pidge silently agreed, and she and Allura jumped back into the battle.

* * *

Keith turned his comm off and leaned his head against the wall he’d scooted against. He took a deep breath. He had the general feeling that his side was  _ supposed _ to be throbbing, but he couldn’t feel any pain. The fresh blood soaking into his suit, however, that he could feel. Something must’ve torn again, or rather more, during the fall. His right arm also felt like it  _ should  _ hurt like hell, probably dislocated from the blast as he couldn’t move the shoulder, yet it didn’t. He needed to set it, but those sentries were close. Too close. 

He pushed himself up to his feet and activated his bayard, the familiar weight in his left hand and the protective growl in the back of his head a comfort. Pressing himself against the wall, he lay in wait. 

The first sentry didn’t even notice him as it marched past him. The second one didn’t either. The third didn’t have time before his sword had caused its head to clatter to the floor. He continued the swing down and through the first two sentries, slicing through their torsos. Turning, Keith used the follow through to build momentum behind his next swing, slicing through two more and leaving one left with its blaster up. He rolled under a shot and kicked its legs out before he stabbed his sword down into its chest and sliced upwards to relieve it of its head. 

Keith leaned around the corner and spotted nothing else approaching. Satisfied for the moment, he turned his attention to his shoulder. Sheathing his bayard again he poked at it. Dislocated backwards, that was new. He steeled himself and lifted his arm with his left hand, pulling it around behind his head until he heard a sickening pop and his body told him he wasn’t supposed to be screaming in quite as much pain. 

With quiet thanks to whatever had kept him from passing out from pain while doing that (he suspected it was Scarlet, but she was silent in his head) Keith experimentally moved his right shoulder. He’d need to be careful as he could be with it, but at least it was mobile now. He took his bayard out again, and moved around the corner as stealthily as he could.

* * *

The four of them had taken out the majority of the sentries, but the lieutenant was clinging to the ceiling. Her non-druid hand and feet were braced against several pipes at a junction a few meters down the hall, seemingly aware that the ceiling was the one place the Paladins wouldn’t shoot.

Allura stepped steadily forward, swinging her staff to hit a sentry that was attempting to crawl its legless self towards a gun. Lance and Hunk advanced next to her, Hunk blasting the few remaining sentries while Lance aimed his rifle at the lieutenant.

“Surrender,” Allura yelled at her.

“Why would I? You’re two Paladins down, I’m sure I can take you all. It’s too close quarters for you all to be useful.”

There was a collective narrowing of eyes.

Pidge whipped her bayard at the lieutenant, but she dropped to the floor and the hook lodged in the pipes. Pidge let her bayard retract and kicked the lieutenant in the face as she grabbed onto a pipe. Below her, Allura whirled her staff at the Galra’s head but was met with an easy block. She ducked into a sweep that missed as the lieutenant jumped back straight into a salvo from Lance and Hunk. With a yelp the lieutenant brought her druid hand up to block the shots, but failed to notice Allura rolling forward and smacking her legs out from under her.

The lieutenant hit the floor, hard. Allura swung her staff down, but the lieutenant brought a leg up and it deflected off her shin armor. Pidge took the opportunity to drop down on top of the lieutenant and managed to get her taser between two armor plates. She shrieked and threw Pidge off, rolling away to her feet. Lance and Hunk fired at her again and landed a few shots, but it did nothing against the lieutenant’s plating. 

Visibly protecting the place that Pidge had shocked her, the lieutenant backed down the hallway past a cross corridor. They all froze for a moment as a distant roar echoed through the base. The lieutenant cocked her head as if listening to something, then her eyes widened and she turned to dash down the corridor.

“Lance, Hunk, go help Shiro and Keith, Pidge and I will follow the lieutenant,” Allura said, already running after the lieutenant. “Get to the stairs down by the hangar.”

Lance nodded. “Come on,” he gestured to Hunk and the two ran down the cross corridor, doubling back around to get to the hangar. Pidge followed Allura. She had a pretty good idea of what the lieutenant was heading towards, and why she was, and it had everything to do with that roar.

* * *

Keith had destroyed two more patrols in the past eight minutes. He peeked around another corner and quickly turned back. Instead of a fireteam, there was a whole squad marching towards him.

Well, at least it wasn’t a platoon. He could handle a squad. He’d handled multiple squads at once before. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, as Lance would say.

He took a deep breath and charged around the corner with a yell. The first two sentries went down with a swipe of his bayard and he turned into the follow through, throwing another backwards with a side-thrust kick before he stabbed it. He brought up his shield and bashed it into the sentry on his right, then lunged forward and stabbed through another sentry. He swiped left through another and rolled to the side, dodging shots. Keith ducked behind his shield and slowly advanced. One sentry toppled backwards from deflected shots. He sliced through two more and activated his jetpack for a boost across the hall.

Only, it didn’t activate. That precious moment of frozen movement as he processed that he wasn’t flying across the hall cost him and a shot hit him on the chestplate. He stumbled back a step, wind knocked out of him. He barely managed to bring his shield around to block the next few shots. Forcing himself to move, Keith ran across the hall and sliced up and through three more sentries. He kicked a headless sentry with as much force as he could muster into another’s line of fire, using it as a temporary shield as he stabbed one and turned the motion into a slice through another. With a final spin he slashed down through the last sentry of the squad.

Panting, he stood in a ready stance in the middle of the hallway. Scarlet’s worried growl echoed through his mind. “I’m okay,” he muttered. She obviously didn’t believe him. Truth be told, he was getting tired. He’d been running on adrenaline and nothing else since the battle had started, hell all  _ day, _ and there came a point where even he had to take a rest. Adrenaline could only do so much, especially when one was wounded.

Right, when one was steadily bleeding from their side. That probably wasn’t helping.

Sighing because there was nothing he could do for either of those problems, he took a moment to look at his suit diagnostics. His jetpack’s wing extenders were damaged, likely from getting slammed into the ground. He could  _ technically _ activate the jetpack after deactivating a few failsafes, but he’d prefer not to burn his butt, fire Paladin be damned. His chestplate had large burnmark right on the red v-shape, and he’d be willing to bet he had at the very least a major bruise and quite possibly a broken rib right under it, but it didn’t seem damaged past cosmetically. 

Keith leaned his head back and just breathed for a moment. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It was probably a bad idea to do this in the middle of the hallway, but right now he didn’t care. He just wanted a clear breath of air. 

Somewhere, Scarlet was growling at him, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was rising in pitch, in urgency, he needed to turn around—

—a blast hit his right rerebrace and sent him stumbling. He was distantly aware that he should have been screaming in pain, that his already damaged arm was on  _ fire,  _ but he couldn’t feel it. Keith activated his shield again, bringing it up and reflecting more shots as he scanned the hallway. Well, speak of the devil.

A whole platoon. 

He burst into motion. Three sentries fell to a slash, one to a stab, two more to a wheel kick-slash combo. His right side protested when he used his momentum to jump up a sentry and run along the wall for a moment, jumping on top of another, slicing its head off, and destroying two more as he rolled off it.

Keith turned to face the sentries and blinked. Was this a concussion finally manifesting from smacking into the corridor floor? He swore the sentries had multiplied. He shook his head to try and clear it and slashed through another sentry. Rolling away from a salvo of shots, he hid behind his shield and focused on the crowd of sentries. That hadn’t cleared his head. Experimentally, he closed one eye.

Oh. There  _ were _ more sentries. At least a whole nother platoon. There might’ve been another behind that one, but at that point it was just a mass of grey on grey metal.

Holy shit that was a lot of sentries. 

Keith gaped for a precious second. He might,  _ might _ be able to take on that many sentries by himself on a good day. Right now, though, with a wounded shoulder, a bleeding side, and a probably broken rib, he was in no shape to fight what was probably over a hundred sentries  _ by himself.  _ He needed to get  _ out _ of here, he needed backup, he needed to make his way through to Shiro and the team, he needed the ability to  _ take a damn breath. _

Scarlet was growling in his head, louder and louder but wordless, pure emotion. Worry, fear, a very familiar protectiveness, the desire to get him backup,  _ to back him up, desperation.  _ Keith closed his eyes and opened his mind.

They opened their eyes with a feral grin and a roar.

* * *

Allura and Pidge cornered the lieutenant right where Pidge suspected they would. They blocked the end of the dead-end corridor, bayard and staff held at the ready. The lieutenant was repeatedly slamming her hand into the control panel of the one door at the end of the hallway.

“It’s not going to work,” Pidge called. She held up her gauntlet. “Program always gets it, sooner or later.”

Allura stepped forward slightly, adding, “Surrender, there is no point in resisting any longer.”

The lieutenant growled and turned to face them. “Surrender? No. I am a Galra, with a Galra’s  _ honor. _ We do not surrender. It is victory, or death.  _ Vrepitca! _ ”

With a cry the lieutenant charged them, her druid hand powering up. Pidge shot out her grappling hook above the lieutenant and charged her herself, ducking under the arm and pulling her bayard’s hook into the arm. She tugged, trying to keep the arm in place; they didn’t need a repeat of the earlier incident. Allura jumped and whirled her staff, slamming it down into the lieutenant’s arm. Metal crunched and the light flickered.

The lieutenant wrenched her arm forward with as much force as she could muster, sending Pidge flying, but she didn’t lose her grip on the arm. Grunting, she activated the taser function and green sparks danced along the druid arm. The light completely disappeared. Allura whacked the lieutenant in the side, blocked a punch to her head, then jabbed just under the lieutenant’s chestplate. Wind knocked out of her, the lieutenant stumbled back slightly, letting Allura come in with a flurry of strikes, staff swinging figure eights to the side before she whirled it completely around her body and smacked the lieutenant’s helmet off her head. 

The lieutenant slumped to the side, unconscious. Pidge retracted her bayard and stepped up to her. She poked at her with her foot. “Well, that worked.”

“Indeed,” Allura said, staring at the door. “Where was she trying to get?”

“This,” Pidge said, dragging the lieutenant over to the door, “I _ think _ is a comm jammer, which makes a lot more sense than our equipment not being able to break through the snow.”

“Then why was it intermittent?”

Pidge tapped her gauntlet, changing the code in the door back before placing the lieutenant’s hand on the door. “Because  _ theirs _ couldn’t.”

* * *

General Roguvi was prone to fear, it was how he had ended up on this godsforsaken ice ball of a planet, but this.... Even in his nightmares he had never seen anything like this. The Red Paladin, visibly injured and exhausted, separated from his companions by rubble and long corridors, had somehow gotten a second wind. No, it was more than a wind. It was a  _ wildfire. _

And so he was afraid.

He spun on his heel. “Fall back to the hangar!” he barked, “we make our escape while we can.”

“But, Sir!” one of the junior commanders said.

Roguvi glared at him, then pointed at the monitor that was showing a feed from a drone he had sent to discover what was suddenly making so many sentries fail. He would swear upon the Empire he served that the Paladin’s eyes were glowing the color of flame. “Do  _ you _ want to be here when he gets here?”

The junior commander gulped, and shook his head.

“Then  _ fall. Back.” _

* * *

Shiro had lost track of how long he’d been running through the base. A few seconds? Minutes? Hours? It had all blurred together with the identical walls of the hallway. Only once did he run into a few sentries, easily dispatched without gaining a scratch.

He skidded to a stop when he heard a roar. A very  _ distinctive _ roar. “Keith.” Shiro broke into a run again, winding through the twisting corridors of the base as fast as he could.

He reached the secondary hangar just as Scarlet fell through the ceiling. She came crashing down with a roar, her eyes glowing menacingly as the sentries below her looked up. If they hadn’t been dumb AI, they might have recoiled in fear.

Shiro himself almost did. This wasn’t Scarlet being playful with Keith, this wasn’t Scarlet high on whatever amounted to adrenaline, charging through asteroid fields with her Paladin for fun, this wasn’t even mid-battle Scarlet, focused on the mission. No, this was the Scarlet that would destroy a mountain for her cub, and she was  _ terrifying. _ She roared and her tail whipped a few sentries into dust.

Shiro finally came to his senses when a group of sentries noticed him and took a few potshots. He dived behind a crate and came around the other side, slicing through the them cleanly. He glanced to the side when he heard a noise and saw Lance and Hunk step out of a stairwell, twin gaping looks on their faces. “What the  _ hell?” _ Lance breathed.

Shiro jogged over to them, ducking under Scarlet’s tail as it whipped over his head. “I suggest we stay out of her way!”

“Allura told us to come help,” Hunk said, “but it doesn’t really look like you and Keith need us.”

Shiro glanced between Scarlet and the other two Paladins. “Yeah, I don’t think Keith’s with her.”

Hunk opened his mouth to respond, but then flattened all three of them to the floor as a few sentries opened fire. “Let’s focus on ourselves, yeah?”

“Right. Stay aware of what Scarlet’s doing. Right now she’s keeping fire on the west tunnel, but that could change. We take care of any sentries shooting at us, and anything on the east side. Lance, find a sniper hideout and watch our backs. Hunk, I’ll clump them and you take them out.”

* * *

They were a fireball, burning through the sentries with sword and foot and claw. The sentries never knew what hit them. Each slash had so much power behind it, each stab the strength of a Lion with the ferocity of a Galra. Sentries dropped like moths gathered to a flame. A wildfire, overpowering, all consuming, destroying everything in their path, burning a streak through and leaving only ashes behind.

Before they knew it, their smaller half was in the command centre. They didn’t pause for breath, bursting in. The command crew of the base was running already out the other side of the room. One, in fancier armor and with a druid hand that gave him away, stood in the centre of the room, staring at them in frozen terror.

“Surrender,” they growled.

That unfroze the general. “Never! I have betrayed the honor of my house, of my Empire once before, and I vowed to never do so again!  _ Vrepitca!”  _ With that, he charged at them. 

They easily leapt out of the way of his charge, taking the time to slice of the head of a command sentry nearby. They whipped a kick into the sentry, sending it flying towards the general. He easily slapped it away with his druid hand, but they were right behind it, raining a flurry of strikes at the general’s head and torso. He backpedaled, blocking a few, but one slash ripped through his armor on the side of his stomach. The general tripped backwards and fell over a console. They jumped over the console and landed just as the general rolled out of the way. Non-druid hand held to his side, he turned and faced them. They circled him for a moment, studying his movements. Then, he turned and ran. They had not been expecting this. They lost a few precious seconds to surprise, but ran after him into the hallway leading to the hangar. 

They closed their helmet, then turned their head to the west tunnel. Knowing that was where the general and they would come out, they breathed a stream of fire. Sentries melted into the floor, sparking remains. Ahead of them, the general skidded to a stop, protecting himself with his druid hand from the flame. They needed no such thing.

With a cry they ran headlong into the slithers of flame and slammed into the general. He was forced to move to use his druid hand to block their blade and expose himself to the flame. From sheer momentum he went flying towards the hangar, and they followed. They stopped breathing flame in favor of swiping at a nearby group of sentries, smashing them to a pile of sparks. 

They feinted high and slashed low, hitting the general’s upper leg. He howled and punched at them. They blocked, but skidded backwards from the force, giving the general enough time to turn and run. Again, they followed after, bayard held to the side, running through the remnants of flame.

The general froze in terror as he burst into the hangar, and they lowered their head with a growl. He stepped backwards and didn’t see their smaller half coming as they gave a cry and sliced clean through his arm. The general staggered to the side, blinking at his arm. They whipped the hilt of their bayard around and knocked him out.

Their smaller half looked up at their larger half, and the larger half looked down. Only then did a thought pass through their mind: so  _ this _ was the naverea. They smiled. This was nice. A stray shot whipped past both of their heads and they turned as one with a growl to face the battle still going on on the other side of the hangar. 

A familiar glow of blue and red was perched on a stack of boxes near them, a stray sentry sneaking up behind him. They darted forward and slashed through the sentries legs, causing the shot to go wide over Lance’s shoulder. He turned with a yelp in the corner of their eye as they used the follow through to slash back up through the sentries head. “Keith!”

They looked at the Blue Paladin and gave him a nod, then ran past his perch to a patch of yellow with specks of green. Their larger half turned and whipped at the sentries with their tail, then bit at a few that were lining up to strike their smaller half. They jumped on top of a row of boxes and then jumped off the end, bringing their sword down through a group of sentries that Hunk was yelling at Shiro about. Ahead of them, Shiro turned. His face was relieved when he saw them, but quickly turned concerned. 

They whirled through another sentry and ended up back to back with Shiro. His familiar purple-black glow was cut through with yellow and blue and red and green. Fighting with him at their back was a breeze, and between the four of them the last of the sentries in the hangar were easily dispatched.

Finally, they could let down their guard. They let their bayard collapse into their armor and their faceplate open, and tilted their head back. Their larger half padded towards their smaller half and lowered their head. They were breathing heavily, despite their bolstered, mixed energy. 

“Keith—er, Red, I guess?”

They opened their eyes and turned to face Shiro. “Yeah?” they managed. 

“Are you okay?”

They considered. “Could probably use a healing pod,” they admitted, voice hoarse from yelling. Shiro’s eyes were concerned, but he turned to Lance and Hunk who had jogged over. “Where are Pidge and Allura?”

“Ran after the other lieutenant,” Hunk said. They could feel his eyes on them. “Whoa, what did you  _ do, _ buddy?”

They shook their head, a silent refusal to answer, and tried to focus on calming their breathing. Shiro was saying something into the comm, and Pidge was saying something back about the base being clear, but they only distantly heard it. Whatever had been keeping the pain at bay was starting to wear off. The distant fire of their shoulder was closer now, burning in the back of their mind. They lowered their ramp and walked up into their cockpit. Settling in their chair they gripped the controls and just breathed for a while. Breathed past the ache in their chest, past the fire in their arm. 

Shiro’s hand settled on their right shoulder and they had to suppress a hiss of pain. “We’re all aboard.” They knew this, of course. They’d closed their mouth after Allura and Pidge had run up the ramp, but they didn’t comment. They activated their thrusters, and shot off towards the Castle.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise you get to see the Keith eventually it's so awesome I managed to anIMATE IT ITS A GIF AND IM REALLY HOPING ITLL WORK ON HERE BC ITS THE BEST THING IVE DONE TO DATE but the fic it goes with has two (2) scenes solid in my head and nothing else so I have,,, plot more for it  
> Sidenote: I love??? Writing??? Keith battle scenes??? It’s so fun dhdjskals and thinking of his dynamic with Scarlet and Kuro and the other Paladins  
> I’m actually basically done the last chapter just oneeee more thing


	9. Unknown Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people get steadily closer to a certain unknown secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny edit: holy FUCKING shit when did this pass uhhhhhhhhhh everything i've posted and become 22000 words?????? The google doc I've been writing on is _forty pages_  
>  also I POSTED TWO CHAPTERS BASICALLY WITHIN AN HOUR OF EACH OTHER MAKE SURE YOU READ BOTH

Shiro half dragged them to the medbay. Their adrenaline was crashing,  _ hard, _ now that they were no longer in battle, and at this point the only thing keeping their smaller half awake was the naverea. Whatever had been keeping the pain at bay way fading too, although slower than the adrenaline, and every movement of their right arm sent shards of pain through their system. 

The medbay doors opened to reveal Coran flitting around the room. He turned at the sound. “Keith, you absolute  _ quiznacking idiot!” _

They smiled sheepishly. “Hey, Coran.”

“Shiro, put him down on that table over there and  _ keep him there _ while I find the scanner.”

Shiro set his brother down and leaned him back on the examining table, then started removing the bits of armor he knew he could. He slipped Keith’s helmet off and set it on the floor, then his arm was suddenly in someone’s grip. He looked up at Keith’s face and his glowing red eyes. “Shiro.”

“Yeah, hey.”

“Can I trust you to take care of him?”

Shiro blinked. Take care of who? Who was Keith—oh. It wasn’t Keith that was talking here, probably not even Red. Scarlet. A pang of guilt for letting Keith get hurt pierced his heart, followed by a resurgence of protective older brother instincts, as Pidge had once called them. “You have my word, Scarlet.”

“Good.” The red faded from Keith’s eyes, replaced with his normal, albeit almost alien, purple. “I’m gonna pass out now.”

* * *

All five lions were in the main hangar, splayed out in their usual spots. Scarlet was pacing, still unable to sit still. Shiro had personally come by to tell her that Keith was going to be alright, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t worried. The lingering effects of the naverea kept their connection open wide, and she wasn’t used to him being so...still. Even when he needed to be stealthy, even when asleep, his quintessence was a tumultuous burning flame. This was the first time he’d been in a healing pod for an extended length of time, and it was  _ weird. _ Even with her prior Paladins it’d never been quite like this. Maybe it was the air feeding the flame. Did the others experience this? Probably not, even Lance’s quintessence wasn’t like Keith’s, the water keeping the flame calm.

**Hey, team, we need to have a talk.**

Scarlet froze for a second at Kuro’s voice, then continued pacing. She knew what Kuro wanted, and she didn’t want to have this talk. Saying....that...had been a mistake that she wished Kuro would forget.

**Scarlet.**

She turned to face him, wary, hackles raised. The other three were standing in a half-circle around Kuro, looking her way, confusion radiating out from their bonds.

**I’m going to preface this by reassuring you that nothing is going to happen to him.**

**You don’t know that,** she growled. 

Kuro gave a sort of sigh and stood up. He walked towards her, but stopped far enough away that she could move away if she wanted.  **I, out of all of us, have no issue with what you told me, and I’m sure no one else does either. But I need to know that at least all of us are aware of it so if the Paladins discover it, we can help them.**

She considered him, then sighed. He was right, out of all of them, Kuro had no issue with a Galran Paladin. Azul wouldn’t either, Sama was too good-hearted to care, and Jade wouldn’t do anything more than try to study him from afar.  **Keith’s half-Galra.** There was a ripple of surprise from Sama and Jade, but strangely Azul didn’t even react. Scarlet looked at her quizzically.

**Okay. Do you know anything more?** Kuro asked,  **Anything else that would be useful to avoid situations like earlier? Anything about what Galra were on Earth for this to happen?**

**Only what we already know about the Galra. He knew his father, briefly, but does not remember his mother. Other than the fact that his Galran genes must be from her, I know nothing about her.**

**I do.**

All four lions turned to look at Azul.  **What?**

Azul hummed, and an image filtered its way across their bonds. There was a human man, holding someone who was obviously a young Keith. They were smiling and laughing at something said by the other figure in the image: a female Galra wearing the old Blue Paladin armor. 

They all gaped for a minute; Kuro was the first to form words.  **How did she survive?**

**After we crashed I managed to guide her to my cryo-pod, but then something malfunctioned and she got stuck. I couldn’t wake her up until maybe an Earth year before Keith was born when my systems were mostly fixed.**

**What happened? Why is she not with you?**

Azul looked away from them.  **It was her choice.** More images flashed into the rest of the Lion’s minds: transmissions from the Imperials, Azul biting at a sentry on a bike, Keith and the human man being held at gunpoint, collecting materials for a burial pyre. Then, the Paladin, armorless, holding a sleeping Keith, saying her final goodbye, and a cut connection.

**Krolia left to deal with the ship, to save both Keith and me. She left Keith at the garrison, unwilling to bring him into a war. I do not know what happened to her after that.**

**Some good leaving him did,** Scarlet growled, thinking of everything that had happened to her cub.

**Okay. Well, now we know that Keith is a descendent of the House of Marmora, which could help us....somehow,** Kuro cut in.

**That House was the royal guards and family before everything went down, right? Didn’t they have a special reaction to marthuzitok?** Sama said,  **Do we want to keep him away from that and any potential consequences that would have?**

**Krolia left her Blade with him.**

**Yes, he still has the Blade. He doesn’t seem to concretely know what it is, though.**

Kuro settled down on the floor again.  **Well, I don’t see that we need to do anything. If he figures it out, he figures it out. I just wanted everyone to be aware so that if or when he** **_does_ ** **figure it out, we can help the others handle it.**

**Or stop them from doing something rash,** Scarlet growled.

**They won’t.** Jade growled back.

Scarlet wasn’t so sure about that, but she kept it to herself. 

* * *

Coran peered at the readouts of Keith’s cryopod. His injuries were healing at a remarkable rate, even for the pods, but something seemed....off. With a frown he shifted to the display on the wall of the medbay and changed it so that Keith’s readouts were displayed next to Shiro and Lance’s from their own times in the pods.

The first thing that caught his eye was that Keith’s base temperature was a few degrees higher than the other humans. While a tad strange, that by itself was nothing to be concerned about. It might help explain the oddity that Keith got hypothermia while Shiro didn’t though, assuming that each human had the same sized range of acceptable temperatures. 

Coran continued scrolling through the readouts, trying to figure out what was niggling at the back of his mind. The full body scans seemed mostly the same, minor differences in organ size aside. Brain waves, heartbeat, respiratory rate, every single measure of general health were all close enough to each other to be accounted for by the differences between individuals.

Coran poked all three blood samples and they moved to fill the screen. Red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets were all relatively the same. He quick scrolled through the hormone list for all three Paladins: testosterone, estradiol, T-three, T-four, elevated adrenaline and cortisol as expected being in a pod post-battle....nothing out of the ordinary.

Except Keith’s kept scrolling.

He blinked at the readout for a moment. At the bottom of the list sat two hormones that were not in any of the other Paladins: catok and dovra.

Two very Galran names.

Not only did Keith  _ have _ these two hormones, but he had  _ large _ amounts of them. The amount that normally appeared in a Galra post-battle.

Huh.

Coran continued blinking at the readout for a moment before he managed to shake himself out of it. If Keith was part Galra, he was going to need a different setting on the cryopods than anyone else to account for his base temperature and different anatomy. But he clearly wasn’t  _ full _ Galra, so he couldn’t just set it for an adolescent Galra. Human settings had been working so far, but that didn’t mean they would work forever.

He wondered how much he would have to do to convince Allura to make a stop somewhere with a huge medical database.

* * *

Keith flopped onto his bed face first, still thoroughly exhausted. Two quntants in the cryopod had healed his injuries, but it never helped with tiredness. Shiro had informed him that the Dawhari resistance had retaken their capital, even fixed the tower that had started to fall over, and had been given the Imperial command crew to do with as they wished under their laws. Everything was taken care of, he was healed, and yet he couldn’t sleep.

What had been blocking the pain during that battle? He’d attribute it to the navarea, as something Allura hadn’t bothered to explain or a side effect she didn’t know about, but it had started  _ before. _ He tried to think of a single time during the entire battle he had felt pain as something other than a distant reminder that it was supposed to be there. 

Keith discovered he couldn’t. The last time he remembered feeling actual pain was sitting on the examining table with Coran poking at his side. Was it the adrenaline? But adrenaline didn’t affect pain receptors like that. 

Then again, he was pretty sure it had always affected  _ him _ like that, no matter what biology teachers had told him. Adrenaline wasn’t  _ supposed _ to almost completely prevent a person from feeling pain, no matter how much they were experiencing. Adrenaline still had a pain threshold. Whatever this was....didn’t. 

Keith rolled over and slipped his knife out from under his pillow. He undid the wrappings on the hilt and stared at it. His violet eyes stared back at him from its shining blade. Maybe....

He added his apparent inability to feel pain during a fight to the steadily growing list of things that made him think that he might not be entirely human. The list of things that was pointing more and more to him being part Galra. With a sigh he wrapped the knife’s hilt again and slipped it back under his pillow. Further musing could wait until he wasn’t running on cryo-sleep. 

A familiar warmth easily appeared in the back of his mind and he smiled.  **Sleep, young cub. Everything is always better in the morning.**

Keith drifted off to her quiet, somehow off-key humming curled in her warm presence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND DONE!  
> THanks y'all who've read this as I'm posting it for sticking through my update "schedule" shenanigans and commenting so mcuh ;; I can't always spare the focus to reply but they're what keep me going and inspired  
> And now I go to shade a Keef. And write out the battle associated with it :D


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